Look into my eyes: The power of hypnosis

Re:Look into my eyes: The power of hypnosis by joeyo on Friday October 09, 2009 @04:29PM (#872376)

I'm not familiar with the studies you are referring to, so what I am about to suggest may have been controlled for, but I wonder if the apparent increase in strength of the placebo effect is simply due to recent drugs being less effective (with respect to placebo). Or alternatively, perhaps there are more new drugs these days for treating conditions where it is quantitatively difficult to measure the outcome-- think: anxiety or depression not high blood pressure or pneumonia.

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Re:Look into my eyes: The power of hypnosis by jcl on Friday October 09, 2009 @05:03PM (#872451)

This result was mentioned previously on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=783912

Apparently, not only are some new drugs failing to pass a test showing that they are more effective than placebos, but old drugs that previously passed a placebo test might fail if they were tested today.

They give a number of possible reasons in the article why this might occur. One hypothesis was that suitable trial patients are not as sick as they used to be, since the really bad cases today would be on drugs that didn't exist back then (which makes them ineligible for the trial). Another hypothesis was that trials today are performed in more third-world locations, where the quality-of-life difference between standard medical care and a drug trial is more pronounced, amplifying the placebo effect. But no one knows for sure why it's happening.

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Re:Look into my eyes: The power of hypnosis by randallsquared on Friday October 09, 2009 @05:04PM (#872457)

Another possibility is that people simply trust medicine more than they used to, which seems as though it would directly affect magnitude of the placebo effect.

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