7. An eye-opener on double-blind studies
The core of present-day scientific medicine is more and more boiling down to ‘evidence based medicine’ (EBM). The essence of EBM is double-blind studies: comparing a new supposedly-active substance to placebo whereby both prescriber(s) and patients are ignorant (‘blind’) in regard to whether they get placebo or the ‘active’ substance.
◊◊◊
Nice.
◊◊◊
Everything (really: everything in this matter) stands or falls with whether blind is blind. If it is, then so much the better. If it isn’t, then present-day scientific medicine is still at a low level of science and should evolve from this with extreme urgency.
◊◊◊
So: is blind very blind? I don’t think so.
◊◊◊
The point is that a placebo doesn’t work through conscious expectation. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t work through a conscious whatsoever. If a placebo for instance lowers the blood pressure, it’s not because you consciously lower your BP. Purely consciously, you’re not capable of doing so. Placebo (or better said: your own inner strength in this) works through the subconscious. Therefore the subconscious is what is important in all this.
◊◊◊
So the pertinent question is not whether you are consciously blind, but rather whether you are subconsciously blind. That is a question that has hardly at all entered into scientifically.
◊◊◊
Take the side effects of medication. Does the subconscious register consciously-felt side effects? To me there is no doubt about this. Can it also register not-consciously-felt side effects? Let me ask it like this: why shouldn’t it? One can be certain that the subconscious registers any bodily change. Therefore also the slightest side-effect of medication.
◊◊◊
Since medication (the ‘active substance’ in double-blind studies) always has lots of side effects, while a pure placebo has as good as none, to the subconscious at least the difference is always clear. This is: at this very important level, there is little or no double-blindness at all. Let me repeat this.
◊◊◊
There is little or no double-blindness at all!
◊◊◊
The same argument can be made not only for the side-effects, but also for the meant effect. This makes it even worse!
◊◊◊
Conclusion: a double-blind study compares an active substance, potentially having lots of placebo-activity, to a placebo with relatively little placebo-activity. While such a study is supposed to lead to a subtraction of placebo-activity, quite the reverse happens in reality. Scientists are beginning to become aware of this problem. All too slowly.
◊◊◊
As said, this is the essence of the core of present-day scientific medicine.
◊◊◊
Related Posts
35. Fear of flying? Let the sky not be thy limit.
The world is becoming smaller and smaller. Airplanes are getting bigger and bigger. Only fear of flying remains the same. This means that more and more people are in a position that they need to fly, or would like to fly, but are afraid to. The airport is their closed door. ◊◊◊ I have good Read the full article…
55. Making medicine 80% cheaper? No problem
Health is money (and vice versa). At least, that seems to be the message if you read the world in a pharmaceutical company’s handbook. The problem is that money is to many people still a rather scarce commodity. In the US, 30% of personal bankruptcies are due to the out-of-own-pocket costs of medical care. In Read the full article…
4. So plastic flowers are real after all… are they?
Good to know (yet not a recent finding) for all asthmatic patients: you can get an asthmatic attack through contact with a plastic flower (*). It may surprise you at first, but this is extremely good news, since it means that the relation between allergen (the thing you react to) and your reaction itself is Read the full article…