The Curse of Fengeek

There has for a long time been a dispute about the so-called "placebo effect," where a treatment with no active substances seems to have real clinical effect. As the Christian Science Monitor for Wednesday says,

[w]hen an inert placebo acts like a drug, is it just a psychological illusion? Or is it a real biological effect? ...

The effect has been demonstrated often enough to show that some patients appear to benefit from such belief. But there hasn't been enough evidence to convince skeptics that anything more than the so-called power of suggestion is at work.

But, the article immediately adds, "That's changing."

Research reported last week suggests that it's both [illusion and effect]. The mere belief that they had received a pain killer was enough to release the brain's natural painkilling endorphins in the patients tested, scientists say. ...

"The findings of this study are counter to the common thought that the placebo effect is purely psychological due to suggestion and that it does not represent a real physical change." says University of Michigan neuroscientist Jon-Kar Zubieta. He is principal author of the study published Aug. 24 in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Previous research had looked at brain scans to see how activity changed in parts of the brain that register pain in patients that experienced relief from placebos. Those trials found a connection, but skeptics dismissed it on the grounds that it could be coincidence unrelated to mental state.

However, the new showing that the patients' sense of relief coincided with the release of pain-reducing chemicals in the brain is much stronger evidence that, as the researchers said,

while pain does have "sensory components," it is "a psychologically constructed experience"

that can be affected by our expectations.

There are, indeed, some ways in which belief can make it so.