The problematics of the ‘placebo effect’ for a biomedical view of illness. (original) (raw)

Constructing the placebo effect in the placebo wars: What is the way forward?

The concept of placebo has had a long history in medicine, and has evolved over time with the introduction of randomized controlled trials for health treatments, the increasing research done around the psychotherapies, the development of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) approaches to health, as well as the conceptual contributions from academic disciplines like psychology and anthropology. In recent years, discourses about placebo have pursued a number of key directions, and the current review paper explores these developments. For example, psychology has looked at placebo in terms of classical conditioning and the role of anxiety. Anthropology on the other hand has focused on the role of meaning and ritual in the placebo effect and psychotherapy research has encouraged an examination of the effects of the therapeutic relationship. Our review paper concludes by outlining directions ahead for future scholarship and research.

Unpacking the Placebo Response: Insights from Ethnographic Studies of Healing

2011

Abstract This paper selectively reviews cross-cultural studies of healing to identify parallels with the process of responding to placebos in biomedical contexts. Placebo responses involve positive therapeutic effects of symbolic stimuli that may be mediated by changes in cognition and attention as well as psychophysiological mechanisms.

Cultural Variations in the Placebo Effect: Ulcers, Anxiety, and Blood Pressure

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2000

An analysis of the control groups in double-blind trials of medicines demonstrates broad variation--from 0 to 100 percent--in placebo effectiveness rates for the same treatment for the same condition. In two cases considered here, drug healing rates covary with placebo healing rates; placebo healing is the ultimate and inescapable "complementary medicine." Several factors can account for the dramatic variation in placebo healing rates, including cultural ones. But because variation differs by illness, large placebo effects for one condition do not necessarily anticipate large placebo effects for other conditions as well. Deeper understanding of the intimate relationship between cultural and biological processes will require close ethnographic scrutiny of the meaningfulness of medical treatment in different societies.