"Walter Kennedy, a British doctor and drug expert, first used the term in 1961, to describe the opposite of the better-known, more benign 'placebo.' ('Placebo' means 'I will please,' in Latin; 'nocebo' means 'I will harm.') Most researchers agree that the way we react to spurious worrying information is not dissimilar to how we respond to a sugar pill. The nocebo effect is most often observed in connection with the side effects of drugs, cases in which self-fulfilling prophecies are common. During a 2003 trial of beta-blockers, one group of male patients was told that a drug could cause erectile dysfunction, while another group was not. After three months, thirty-two per cent of those in the first group complained of erectile problems, compared with three per cent in the second. In 2007, the maker of Eltroxin, a thyroid-replacement drug distributed in New Zealand, moved its manufacture from Canada to Germany. The active ingredients in the drug remained the same, but the new pills were larger and a different color. After the media reported that the new drug was cheaper to make, reports of side effects rose by a factor of two thousand. Whether a nocebo can kill is an open question. In the seventies, oncologists in Australia and the U.S. reported cases of patients dying before their cancers were sufficiently advanced to end their lives."
From "The Psychiatrist Who Believed People Could Tell the Future/After a national disaster, a British doctor began collecting foreboding visions. Soon, they closed in on him" by Sam Knight in The New Yorker.
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16 comments:
Reminds me of this. Mind before body.
In twelve years we're all gonna die.
Scientific consensus says life is going to be really difficult for our children. Nocebo.
My dad was a cop, and he firmly believed that a large number of gunshot fatalities were people who died just because they thought being shot automatically means death.
Well, Dickens had Scrooge blame a bit of undigested cheese for this effect...
What's with Hodgson Mill oat bran being out of stock everywhere. There's a negative expectation. I have to redesign breakfast starting probably Sunday.
first used [nocebo] in 1961,
Huh, I thought it was coined by the guy who recently "discovered" gluten sensitivity, then more recently decided that it was a "nocebo".
How do you distinguish genuine nocebo from people who see an opportunity for a legal payday and are willing to fake the symptoms?
"My dad was a cop, and he firmly believed that a large number of gunshot fatalities were people who died just because they thought being shot automatically means death."
I've read about that. They give up the struggle to live. The converse is people who are so unfamiliar with guns that they don't even recognize a gunshot when it enters their bodies.
Fearmongering kills! Oops; I just fearmongered.
If stress is a subset of fear then, yes, fear kills.
Nocebo and placebo -- critical elements of modern day health care. Even smart, sophisticated folks fall for both.
I've daydreamed about opening a placebo shop. I'd sell all types of placebos, including an expensive, extra strength version.
For an extra fee, customers could meet with a placebo guru, me. The advice from the guru would include common sense things like eat healthy and exercise more, but would add a simple innocuous element, like a short chant or some body movement, as the secret ingredient.
I'd suspect the customers would be divided into three groups; those who would do it once for the ironic enjoyment, those who know what a placebo is but would suspend that knowledge in a search to solve a problem and those who don't know what a placebo is. The later might cause problems with the authorities.
"I've daydreamed about opening a placebo shop."
You'd have to compete with GNC, the Vitamin Shoppe, and Herbalife, but I'm sure there's plenty of room in the market of selling dummy pills to dummies. Good luck!
There is some academic (or quasi-academic) literature on the question of the efficacy of prayer in improving health outcomes. It's been easy to scoff at this as "unscientific" because a showing that prayer is efficacious seems to imply that God exists and cares about the devout believer. I suspect some effort has been made to conduct double-blind experiments so that the prayed-for patients do not know they are prayed for. But perhaps participation in the study at all gives a person some hope and has a placebo (or anti-nocebo) effect.
You'd have to compete with GNC, the Vitamin Shoppe, and Herbalife, but I'm sure there's plenty of room in the market of selling dummy pills to dummies. Good luck!
Not worried. They will be marketed as 100% placebos. No health food adulteration. For marketing I won't have to rely on dubious research for this or that vitamin or herb. There's plenty of legitimate, quantifiable research about the placebo effect, which would be the name of the store.
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