Placebo Keeps Working Even Without Lies

Patients treated with placebo will usually be lied to that drug or medical action given will have a certain effect. Researchers from the Osher Research Center at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have found that placebo also works even when given without the necessary lies.

Many American doctors (one study estimates about 50 percent) secretly provide placebo to unsuspecting patients. Due to ethically questionable lies, Harvard Medical School's associate professor, Ted Kaptchuk, is working with his colleagues at BIDMC to investigate whether placebo strength can also be used honestly.

To do so, 80 patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) were divided into two groups, one group, control, deliberately not receiving treatment, while another received placebo that was honestly described as a sugar pill. The pill really has no active ingredients and is made of inert substances, besides placebo labeled on the bottle. This pill is ordered to be taken twice a day.

For a three-week period, the patients were monitored. At the end of the trial, many placebo-treated patients reported recovery, nearly twice as many as the control group (59 percent versus 35 percent). In addition, on other measures of outcome, patients taking placebo doubled their doubled improvement for a crude count equivalent to the effects of the most powerful IBS drugs.