As I see it, the ‘active’ placebo effect – where some bodily response “tells you” that the drug is “working” such as a dry throat, is known to have a greater result than say a sugar pill alone.
Drug companies also utilize this in their “real medicines”.
I have the distinct impression that drug companies often set up their trial parameters in such a way as to distort the results – So the placebo is inactive and the trial drug – say fluoxetine (prozac) is adulterated with active extras that ‘tell the subject that the drug is working’.
There are a whole range of tricks that clever people routinely do to sell what otherwise would be less wanted or unwanted or indeed criminal to purvey.
The key things I see are that data – to have any scientific credibility – must be open – and that the trials really need to be independent of the drug company influence – which is a trillion dollar distortion field. How could it NOT be?
Our modern society is built on ‘getting’ while avoiding being ‘got from’. And is no basis for whole or healthy anything – nor one in which healing or reintegrating modalities and perspectives can grow and fruit. This calls on a profound ‘paradigm’ shift in our core self definitions as to who we are and what life is for.
If the foundation is corrupt – everything built upon it – no matter how well intentioned – follows suit).
One can petition inherently corrupt institutions to deliver fairness or just and honest service and communication – and fight the lack of this in law to some degree – and there are ways of doing this that share true witness rather than pursue a merely private agenda – but the desire and willingness to uncover a true foundation is discerning what truly resonates your integrity rather than handing all power over to experts – who may be worthy advisers to your informed decision.
Is sickness an absence of drugs? Is pre-emptive sacrifice for the sake of ‘reducing risk’ of fear-mongered conditions – the true cause of which are not investigated or published – a worthy or sane response?
If power and wealth is so disproportionately distributed, it belies that the vast majority want to give it away – or rather use ‘others’ as their protector and guide rather than awaken their own responsibilities. And those riding the wave encourage it and and are encouraged – even demanded – to persist. How insane can insane get before it can no longer mask as sanity – and therefore attract allegiance? They say everyone has their breaking point – but dissociation can fragment into less and less consciousness operating more and more regulated ‘existence’ – perhaps without ever breaking ranks to question its ‘reality’.
The 'Editorial" of the article responded with
A revolutionary approach to testing new drugs is not to use a placebo at all. Who wants to know if something is better than nothing? What you want to know is whether it is better than the best treatment currently available. This is what a wonderful patient oriented research clinic in Italy called Mario Negri does. For more details search for it on this site. It does something else even more radical and even more patient and community minded – it doesn’t take out any patents on the beneficial new molecules it finds.It makes them available to treat people. Utopian? Yes but also feasible. It has been going 60 years.
I further respond:
Firstly placebo is not 'nothing' and the belief it is, 'nothings' the power or agency of Mind. The effects that are known to arise as a result of placebo are far ranging and indicate a link between expectations and brain and body function at the cellular level. Indeed psycho-emotional effect on the body are far reaching - and yet this is what 'traditional science' is dead set on denying - not least by defining everything in material organic terms that the 'person' or subjective response mechanism - is merely subjected to, imprinted or programmed by.
The 'best treatment currently available' is a highly contentious and debatable term. Medical history is littered with the best treatment available that is invariably invalidated by the superseding methods with the idea of 'progress' implicit.
My sense is that there is a significant underlay of unaddressed (read avoided and masked) relational issues - (psycho-emotional) that have cultural and social reinforcements leading to breakdowns of communication and functionality resulting in many patterns of 'dis ease' reflecting and embodying the relational issue.
As a brief pre-amble, consider that unresolved separation trauma is pushed or denied to the 'subconscious and unconscious' or denial habit and denied but active, and much of this is dumped in the body - being unable to move and find acceptance as communication. This essentially sets up a jack in the box of feared or negative threats and outcomes that mask themselves in all kinds of avoidance and displacement patterns - including sickness and susceptibility to sickness. This perspective is likely to trigger defensive rage in those who equate awakening responsibility with blame and penalty. Who find protection from deeper fears by which a propensity for guilt calls their integrity and validity into question. But with this temporary reprieve comes subjection to the 'power' that provides the protection.
When symptoms arise we are trained to fear something has gone wrong and to project the negative expectation forward and seek help to avoid that projection. This is the power of the mind-training of a fundamental distrust of self and Life - in short a communication breakdown of 'separation trauma' re-enacting itself.
One easy to observe experiment is to purposefully align with choosing to act on joyous choices that will inevitably open a truly joyous or unified sense of life and wellbeing - into which the separation-belief pattern interjects itself as a loss of power, worth, relationship, inspiration and perspective. Upon this 'death' is raised a power born of sacrifice that demands a joyless obedience masked perhaps in forms of kindness or mitigated from exposure of its underlying pain - and the hate or rage or fear that is associated there.
None of this has any real cultural understanding in a jack whose persona is manipulated, conformed and coerced to fit an inhuman sense of life - arbited by an elitism to which one cannot possibly engage in communication with - let alone challenge. For everything has been repackaged into complex financial or medical 'instruments' that are traded in a system that is rigged from behind the scenes to make sure clarity or indeed sanity cannot occur - and any instances that cannot be subverted to serve the existing model, will be walled out, demonised and invalidated.
So there is a basis for doing 'nothing' not even taking a placebo, when symptoms arise - in outward terms - while bringing a genuine willingness to notice, acknowledge and open to the symptoms - not just as presenting to initial interpretation - but as a result of an intimate defenceless communication. For there are 'layers' or facets of relational 'dis ease' that come up to be undone and released - simply by truly listening and living from the result of a real communication - that may include taking advices of any kind arising within that communication. And here there is a 'both/and' quality rather than an 'either/or' mind of invalidation and denial.
I don't suggest this is many people's current responsibility to live up to - in fact I don't have a sense of living up to so much as responsibility to align truly or honestly rather than being deceived by conditioned reactions that prevented me checking in to find out.
The dangers in the redefining of drug trials into terms of existing and distorted or filtered narratives of 'best treatment' will mean that bad things can be promoted as excellence relative to worse, and be sanctified by a 'focus on patients'. I see a reversal approach in yet another step that outsources our Life in pacts that draw us into ever deeper dependencies and indebtedness. Mario Negri may have all the best intentions but the principle expounded astounds me.
While in the field of psychological dysfunction - the principles embodied in the Open Dialogue approach (youtube) are what I would call revolutionary - or indeed open a truly evolutionary culture for attending health needs. The power relationship in psychiatry is of course different from medicine generally - but both are state protected and state sponsored - where the line between the Corporate Medical Establishment and the State is no clearer than the Banking sector - or for that matter the military industrial complex.
Statins are part of a mindset of engineering a revenue stream of power and influence - and the protection of that narrative to evidences dismissed as anecdotal or non-clinical is fraudulent or at best the addiction to a model in which one's reputation and status in society depends.
Too big too fail is becoming part of an increasing insane system that cannot or will not accept radical revisions. Being sick, impoverished and warring has become essential for the Economy that is poised to bring in a new world order where sickness and war will of course be eradicated. Well they wont. They will be much more deeply suppressed and channelled into regulatory sacrifice.
Utopia and dystopia go hand in hand when the invalidation of what is here is fuelling the assertion of a power that promises a better future. We can only really evolve what is here and what we have or we operate from a mis take that appeals because it hides what we don't want to know or feel.
I am not opposed to any modality of health care so much as open to a unified and integrative approach. What is best treatment for one may be toxic for another. Mere aggregates do not serve the individual situation and classification and diagnosis may no less serve the professionals anxiety appeasement to be able to seem to have answer rather than including "I/we do not know" as a valid and honest feedback to a request for help. Then working for the State or indeed under its dictates as arises in cancer treatments allowed or else... (UK) means one is not paid for or serving the patient's needs excepting as defined and determined by the State - (which is not so separate from pharmaceuticals and allied lobbies such as food processing industries).
By Jerome Burne