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   Scientific American Magazine

Scientific American Mind
February 2009

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     * February 25, 2009
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   Cover Image: February 2009 Scientific American Magazine See Inside

Placebo Effect: A Cure in the Mind [Preview]

   Belief is powerful medicine, even if the treatment itself is a sham.
   New research shows placebos can also benefit patients who do not have
   faith in them

   By Maj-Britt Niemi

   [pin_it_button.png]
   Image: © ISTOCKPHOTO

In Brief

     * In recent decades reports have confirmed the efficacy of various
       sham treatments in nearly all areas of medicine. Placebos have
       helped alleviate pain, depression, anxiety, Parkinson’s disease,
       inflammatory disorders and even cancer.
     * Placebo effects can arise not only from a conscious belief in a
       drug but also from subconscious associations between recovery and
       the experience of being treated—from the pinch of a shot to a
       doctor’s white coat. Such subliminal conditioning can control
       bodily processes of which we are unaware, such as immune responses
       and the release of hormones.
     * Researchers have decoded some of the biology of placebo responses,
       demonstrating that they stem from active processes in the brain.

   A man whom his doctors referred to as “Mr. Wright” was dying from
   cancer of the lymph nodes. Orange-size tumors had invaded his neck,
   groin, chest and abdomen, and his doctors had exhausted all available
   treatments. Nevertheless, Mr. Wright was confident that a new
   anticancer drug called Krebiozen would cure him, according to a 1957
   report by psychologist Bruno Klopfer of the University of California,
   Los Angeles, entitled “Psychological Variables in Human Cancer.”

   Mr. Wright was bedridden and fighting for each breath when he received
   his first injection. But three days later he was cheerfully ambling
   around the unit, joking with the nurses. Mr. Wright’s tumors had shrunk
   by half, and after 10 more days of treatment he was discharged from the
   hospital. And yet the other patients in the hospital who had received
   Krebiozen showed no improvement.

   This article was originally published with the title Cure in the Mind.
   To read the rest of this article, we recommend purchasing and
   downloading the digital issue from a computer. Email this article link
   for reference.
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