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Art, science, faith and medicine: the implications of the placebo effect
Author(s) -
Price Linnie
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10777362
Subject(s) - placebo , rationality , faith , alternative medicine , clinical trial , psychology , medicine , placebo response , psychotherapist , epistemology , intensive care medicine , philosophy , pathology
The placebo effect has been shown to account for between 30 to 40 per cent of the efficacy of ‘active’ medication for a wide range of pathologies and is probably a powerful agent of cure in other therapies, for example surgery. Medicine has failed, at least explicitly, to confront the implications of this powerful effect, attending to it mainly as a nuisance variable to be controlled for in clinical trials. This paper argues that the existence and extent of the placebo effect represents a challenge to the assumptions behind much medical practice, and throws doubt on the validity of locating disease and healing within a paradigm of scientific rationality.