Home > Work > Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds
21 " Studies of the placebo effect by Ted Kaptchuk, a Harvard researcher, definitively show that the more care you lavish on a person, the more symptomatic relief that person will get. One of Kaptchuk’s studies of patients with irritable bowel syndrome examined the effects of sham acupuncture. The catch here is that both groups of patients received the sham version of the acupuncture. The difference is that in one group the sham acupuncture was administered by a clinician who was cold and curt, whereas in the other group the sham acupuncture was administered by a clinician who was warm, who took the time to sit with the patient before beginning the “treatment.” The caring clinician was instructed to have a “warm friendly manner,” to sympathize with how difficult the condition must be for the patient and to stare thoughtfully into space for about twenty seconds. The curt clinician, by contrast, was instructed to say as little as possible to the patient during the “procedure.” The results? The patients who received treatment from the caring clinician had a huge decrease in pain and in irritable bowel symptoms in the weeks that followed, while the patients who had been with the curt clinician got far fewer benefits. Placebos require that we be kind, in other words, and they prove that kindness and compassion have potent biological consequences. Medicine, however, may not be at a place where it can "
― Lauren Slater , Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds
