

 Placebo effect caught in the act in spinal nerves  - prat
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17993-placebo-effect-caught-in-the-act-in-spinal-nerves.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

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josefresco
I recently read an article (or maybe it was 60 min) that highlighted the
distressing (to drug makers) increase in placebo effectiveness over the last
couple decades. Big pharma's best drugs are now having trouble beating out
placebos. Anyone have the source?

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gambling8nt
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=783912> was a Wired article on that topic
on HN two months ago; perhaps that's what you are remembering?

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prat
I recently watched an episode of house (medical TV show) in which house used
the (probably) well known mirror box method to relieve pain in the phantom
limb of an amputee. That just reinforces the possibility that pain may be more
of a psychosomatic symptom than we think.

This is from Wikipedia article for phantom limb
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb>

"One particularly novel treatment for phantom limb pain is the mirror box
developed by Vilayanur Ramachandran and colleagues (Ramachandran, Rogers-
Ramachandran & Cobb 1995). Through the use of artificial visual feedback it
becomes possible for the patient to "move" the phantom limb, and to unclench
it from potentially painful positions. Repeated training in some subjects has
led to long-term improvement, and in one exceptional case, even to the
complete elimination of the phantom limb between the hand and the shoulder (so
that the phantom hand was dangling from the shoulder)."

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sp332
Ramachandran gave an excellent TED talk, including detailed analysis of the
mirror box.
[http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind...](http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html)

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zackattack
Pharmaceutical companies have big financial incentives to keep this kind of
information out of the public consciousness.

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JabavuAdams
Not really. Placebos are cheap to make, and require the user to believe --
i.e. benefit from marketing.

In our society, I could see the following: the $10 sexily-marketed placebo
pill / treatment must be better than the $2 knock-off, so people buy the $10
pill. Okay, they likely won't be buying $50k / year treatments, but all of a
sudden the meds only cost cents to produce.

Pharma => Apple

~~~
Semiapies
Or, you know, they could exploit the actual pain-killing mechanism discussed
in TFA...

