Placebos
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Placebos
A placebo is defined as an inactive substance resembling a medication, given for
psychological effect or as a control in evaluating a medicine believed to be
active. However the placebo only fits this description under the restraints it
has been given by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which refers to the
placebo as an investigational new drug. In actuality, up until the present much
of medicine was built on placebos. "Not very long ago, the rituals and
symbols of healing constituted the bulk of the physicians armamentarium. In the
early decades of the 20th century, most of the medication that doctors carried
in their little black bags and kept in their office cabinets had little or no
pharmacological value against the maladies for which they were prescribed.
Nevertheless, their use in the appropriate clinical context was no doubt
frequently beneficial."(Brown, 6) Even though placebos have been proven
effective medicine time and time again the FDA remains reluctant to approve them
for anything more than clinical research. The FDA stands on their disapproval of
placebos as medicine on the basis that patients are to be given the best
treatment available. Who is to say that a placebo is not as, if not more
effective than the accepted remedy? There are an endless variety of cases that
have proven placebos inconclusively effective. Among the most famous of these
cases is the story of "Mr. Wright," who was found to have cancer and
in 1957 was given only days to live. Hospitalized in Long Beach, California,
with tumors the size of oranges, he heard that scientists had discovered a horse
serum, Krebiozen, that appeared to be effective against cancer. After Wright
begged to receive the serum, his physician, Dr. Philip West, finally agreed and
gave wright the injection on a Friday afternoon, not telling Wright that
injection consisted only of water. The following Monday the doctor was
astonished to find that the patient's tumors were gone. Dr. West later wrote the
tumors, " had melted like snowballs on a hot stove." At Tulane
University, Dr. Eileen Palace has been using a placebo to restore sexual arousal
in women who say they are nonorgasmic. The women are hooked up to a biofeedback
machine that they are told measures their vaginal blood flow, an index of
arousal. Then they are shown sexual stimuli that would arouse most women. The
experiment then tricks the women by sending a false feedback signal, within 30
seconds, that their vaginal blood flow ...
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