1412 Placebo-nus

A while back, a study determined that people who hear a compliment that they know to be bogus, as in fawning flattery, nonetheless still like to hear it, and still think favorably of the person dishing it up.
A similar thing has just happened in the medical world. A recent study concluded that people who take a placebo benefit from it, even when they know it’s a placebo.
Kind of a placebo-nus.
Placebos, as you know, are simple sugar pills. Doctors have been dispensing them for years to folks the doctors think are suffering from imaginary illnesses, or at the very least untreatable illnesses, in hopes that the positive attitude engendered by taking a supposedly curative pill will indeed effect a cure.
But the basis of the placebo theory is that the patient is in the dark. The patient believes it’s a miracle pill and so a miracle of sorts happens. The recent study totally turned that thinking around.
The patients suffered symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Half the subjects got a placebo pill and were told it was a placebo. Half the patients got nothing. Of the half that got a placebo, 59% reported relief or improvement. Of the placebo-less group, only 35% reported they got better.
Uh-oh. One problem I can see right now. A lot of medical tests use placebos as a comparison to the effectiveness of real experimental drugs. This has got to skew the results.
So what’s the conclusion to draw? Placebos actually work because, like flattery, even knowing they’re a lie people still like them, and that makes them feel better? That’s one possible interpretation. The other?
That sugar actually has some medicinal powers.
They’ll have to change that song. A spoonful of medicine helps the sugar go down...
America, ya gotta love it.