I found a company that sells magnetic products and was wondering if anyone had tried these products?

db

db

There is, however, no doubt that the placebo effect works, and yes, you’re probably right that the patient needs to think they are being “treated” in some way. However, even being told that you are receiving a placebo sometimes seems to work. As to the dogs and rats. The dog is a single anecdotal instance of recovery for whatever reason, putatively just a spontaneous remission, who knows? The rats, on the other hand, were in a trial and did not need to know about placebos and magnetism. Indeed, as I’ve said, I reckon the evidence points to a very simple mechanism taking place in the treatment and that is simply the rapid withdrawal of heat from the “injury” site by the thermal conductivity of the metal placed against it.

Incidentally, I don’t think it’s arrogant of medicine to be healthily skeptical of alternative complementary practices, as I said for every one practice for which there is perhaps some evidence there are a thousand healers and charlatans who are taking money from desperate individuals and offering nothing more than a proverbial shoulder to lean on (which isn’t necessarily all bad, but could be got much cheaper elsewhere).

db

Whenever something new or different appears, the establishment’s first reaction is to ridicule it, then to subject the newcomer to vilification and attempt to stamp it out, then when it won’t go away to finally embrace it as something they were aware of all along and to claim it as their own. However, I digress slightly…

Wikipedia has some interesting information on placebos, stating it is associated with the patient’s belief that the form of treatment they are about to receive will work. The variable results from placebos is probably explained by one person’s belief being stronger than another’s. I have seen a programme where a doctor performed a mock knee operation, with full theatre staff, on a man who was at the end of his tether with pain. When interviewed afterwards, the patient stated he could now dance with his wife and live a normal life. The doctor was at first reluctant to carry out this ‘quack’ operation, fearing ridicule by his peers but was himself astounded at the outcome. That is one man who’s mind has grown just a little.

Which brings us back to rats and dogs. The scientists found a change in the rats, and my neighbour’s dog was greatly improved, by the application of a magnet. For the placebo effect to work, the patient has to be aware that they are being treated and to have faith in the medication/doctor. I’m certain my neighbour would have been kind and comforting to his dog, when he found it could not jump onto his bed, and I’m sure the rats never thought “Ah, this looks like it just might do me some good, for once!” so I argue that the placebo effect is not applicable in these situation, as there was no prior knowledge or anticipation of a successful outcome.

If the rats or dog did not take a chemical to cause their physiological changes, and a placebo effect seems unlikely, then I agree with you that something else must be going on which we do not fully understand. Do you, or any of the original contributors at the start of this debate, have any idea what effect could be causing these changes?

Sincerely,

Mike Jozefiak

Ps Many thanks David for rescuing and ironing out my original letter from the trash bin!

Anyway, I still don’t think the effect reported in the rats and magnets study has anything to do with placebo. Placebo, as you say, could be a very powerful tool and is exploited very well by quacks and various other practitioners across the globe and has been for many years. To put it in hand-wacing terms, the underlying principle of placebo is essentially the soothing hand of a parent on the fevered brow, surely?

As to the placebo effect on animals, especially as observed in pets…many kinds of animal kept as pet can detect only too easily their owner’s mood, a trip to the vet with the promise of a healthy pet to come could so easily have a placebo effect on the owner’s downheartedness, which could rub off (literally), olfactarily, or temperamentally on a pet (in particular dogs) and seemingly. I suspect that there is no placebo that you could give a dog that will cure it of a rampant dose of worms though, no matter how good filling the prescription makes the owner feel.

db

As every doctor, witch or otherwise, knows, the power of belief in the practitioner is 95% of the cure. A case in point is the effect of Voodoo; believe in it and the effects are real enough. Do not believe in it, and Voodo has no effect.

How do rational, thinking, evidence-based scientists, worshiping only the one true God of science, explain the placebo effect or faith healing? Is it the power of suggestion, the patient’s belief that this treatment will cure them, or perhaps some other effect or force which we do not understand but, nevertheless, by the process of elimination, have to admit must exist? Doctors have for ages given sugared pills, conducted mock operations etc. and some patients have been cured, all to the consternation of the Guardians of the Temple.

The fact that not all patients are cured, by whichever method is employed, must surely warrent further investigation, if only out of scientific curiosity.

Something which most people don’t want to admit is that we are not rational beings; we are emotional ones. Anyone who disputes this I would ask to walk on a three inch wide line painted on the floor. Then I would ask them to walk on the same line 30 feet in the air, at which 99% of people would baulk. That is not logic, it is pure emotion.

It is not the fault of caring doctors, and there are many doctors, scientists and healthcare workers who do care, who enter the business wishing to help people; it is the influence of the multi-billion moolah businesses behind the teaching establishments and doctors mug mats that must be scutinised, the status quo who will go out of business if ‘natural’ practitioners are allowed to flourish.

No wonder the MHRA (wholly funded by the pharma companies) tried so hard to get herbals classified as drugs! I wonder if anyone has ever made a comparison between the numbers killed by the chemical companies and those killed by evidence-based-over-thousands-of-years practitioners? Has anyone taken the time to read the side effects warning leaflet that accompanies every bottle of prescription drug? This is not to say that all chemicals are bad, but there is surely room for everyone to co-exist in working together to alleviate suffering, and not dismissing things they do not understand, purely because they don’t understand them.

Many doctors are forgetting their roots, and their roots are just that – roots!

Sincerely,

Mike Jozefiak Guinea Pig

PS. A Norwegian alternative practitioner was prosecuted by the Norwegian equivalent of the MHRA in 2002 for, I kid you not, “illegally curing a seriously ill person”. His case was thrown out of court. The point being? Who cares how someone is cured, as long as they adhere to the 1st Hippocratic principle ‘First, do no harm’. How many doctors, legislators and chemical companies can honestly say they have not prescribed medicines which have killed or harmed their patients? In case anyone has a short memory, do the words Vioxx, Celebrex, Accutane, Bextra, Ephidra, Meridia, Thalidomide, Ortho Evra, etc, ring any bells? Mote and beam.

db

PS I checked the spam filter and cannot see your missing post there, feel free to re-post it and I’ll watch out for it.