Moreimportantly and of great practical significance, the use of the placebo effectneeds to be applied better. This willalso take a lot of study. Empiricalmedicine came to effective therapies by trial and error.
Recallthough that a lot of medical application today is just as curious. An example is vitamin D and vitamin Ctherapy. Proper dosing for both ishigh. Vitamin C needs to reach severalgrams per day and vitamin D one to two grams. Both figures can be inferred from good biological reasoning. Yet the suggested dosage for years and stillwith Vitamin C has been a small fraction of the actual need. And let us not bother to test for eithersufficiency.
In short the recommended dosageswere effectively placebos that perhaps helped slightly and mostly because itencouraged better food choices. Weobviously can do a lot better than that. And by the way, just how much medication is properly adjusted for weightand even gender?
Effective drugs have clearbiological pathways that allow measured and effective intervention. The real purpose of a testing protocol is todiscover secondary effects or pathways that counter the desired effect.
Science is quite right to rejecta protocol that shows marginal improvement that may be placebo based. Yet a side effect that affects a portion ofthe group, yet improves the balance is simply an invitation to find out why sothat the successes can be repeated.
Nearly all drug trials scientifically invalid due to influence of themind; Big Pharma science dissolves into wishful thinking
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) A new study in Science TranslationalMedicine has cast doubt over the scientific validity of nearly allrandomized, double-blind placebo controlled studies involving pharmaceuticalsused on human beings. It turns out that many pharmaceuticals only workbecause people expect them to, not because they have any "real"chemical effect on the body. As you'll see here, when test subjects were toldthat they were not receiving painkiller medications -- even though they were --the medication provedto be completely worthless.
This particular experiment involved applying heat to the legs of test subjectsin order to causepain, thenadding a painkiller medication to an IV drip while assessing the subjects' painlevels. When the painkiller drug waspresent, the test subjects were told about it, and just as expected their painscores significantly dropped. But when test subjects were told the pain medicationhadbeen stopped, their pain levels returned back to the original, non-medicatedlevels even though the pain medication was secretly still being drippedinto their IVs.
The mind of the patient, in other words, is what actually determines the"effectiveness" of the pain drug, not the chemical effect of the drugitself.
Talking to the BBC,Professor Irene Tracey from
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12...).
As pointed out by George Lewith, a professor of health research at theUniversity of Southampton
As pointed out by George Lewith, a professor of health research at the
Many pharmaceuticals onlywork if you believe they do
What the research really means, you see, is that the mind is themain determiner of the effectiveness of many drugs, not the so-calledchemical profile of the drugs themselves. This has been proven out again andagain with not just painkiller drugs, but also with antidepressant drugs whichhave consistently failed to out-perform placebo. (http://www.naturalnews.com/022723.html)
But it all brings up a question: If many pharmaceuticals only work because themind makes them real, then why do some drugs appear to out-perform placebo in clinicaltrials?
The answer to that will probably surprise you: It's because when people are inrandomized, placebo-controlled studies, they'reusually hoping to get the real drugs, not the placebo. And how do theydetermine whether they're getting the "real" drugs? By thepresence of negativesideeffects! As those side effects begin to appear -- constipation, sexualdisorders, nausea, headaches, etc -- then those participantsconvince themselvesthat they received the "real" drugs! And from that point, theirmind makes it real! So the blood pressure actuallythen starts to go down, or their cholesterol numbers drop, and so on.
But it all brings up a question: If many pharmaceuticals only work because themind makes them real, then why do some drugs appear to out-perform placebo in clinicaltrials?
The answer to that will probably surprise you: It's because when people are inrandomized, placebo-controlled studies, they'reusually hoping to get the real drugs, not the placebo. And how do theydetermine whether they're getting the "real" drugs? By thepresence of negativesideeffects! As those side effects begin to appear -- constipation, sexualdisorders, nausea, headaches, etc -- then those participantsconvince themselvesthat they received the "real" drugs! And from that point, theirmind makes it real! So the blood pressure actuallythen starts to go down, or their cholesterol numbers drop, and so on.
The patients makereal whatever expectation they were given when they were recruited for the drugtrial in the first place. Even the act of recruiting people for drug trials sets anexpectation in their minds. Patients, after all, are recruited for a "cancer drug trial"or a "blood pressuredrug trial" or some other trial in which the expected outcome is madeevident during the recruitment phase.
This is all really important to understand so I'm going to break it down stepby step:
Why pharmaceutical "positive" effects are actually generated by theminds of the clinical trial participants:
Step 1: Clinical trial participants are recruited through a trial that isadvertised as testing a drug for a particular outcome such as lowering bloodpressure, halting cancer, normalizing blood sugar, etc. This sets theexpectation of the drug effects in the minds of the patients even before thetrial begins.
Step 2: When the trial begins, the clinical trial participants are told thathalf will be given the "real" drug, and the other half will be givena placebo, but it's a blind study, so no one knows whether they're receivingthe drug or the placebo.
Step 3: Study participants begin to take the pills, but they don't know whetherthey're getting drugs or placebo.
Step 4: Those participants who are receiving the real drugs begin to show toxic sideeffects (because most pharmaceuticals are toxic to thebody). This excitesthem because they conclude that they are on the "real" drugs!
Step 5: Those participants who conclude they are on the "real" drugsthen, through the power oftheir minds, cause their bodies to make real the physiological effectsthat were imprinted in their minds in step one! Whatever drug expectationwas explained to them before the trial, in other words, is suddenly made realby the patient's mind.
Step 6: Meanwhile, those patients receiving the placebo pills and having noside effects convince themselves that they aren't receiving the"real" drugs and therefore they should experience no positivephysiological effects. So their mind makes that real, too, and they get nobenefit from the whole experience.
Step 7: After the end of the clinical trial, the researchers compare the results of the placebogroup against the results of the drug group, and guess what? The drug lookslike it performed better! But was the drug the actual cause of that? Not atall: It was the expectations of the study subjects that made theeffects real. The drugs, in other words, only look good as a resultof wishful thinking.
As you can see here, this calls into question the scientific validityof every randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled drug study that hasever been conducted. The critical scientific failure they all share, you see,is that as part of the clinical trial, the researchers set theexpectations of the drug's results in the minds of the patients. It isthose minds that then made the effects real, not necessarily the drugs.
This leads to the fascinating conclusion that in today's medicalsystem, many drugs may only work when patients expect them tobecause it isthe patient's mind creating the physiological effects, not the drug itself.
So how do you get around this and design a truly scientifictrial that eliminates the effect of the mind?
How to design a truly scientific clinical trial using drugs
The answer to that is simpler than you think: In humans, you musteliminate the trial subjects from learning of any expectation of the drug'seffects. In other words, you can't sign patients up for a "blood pressuredrug trial" because right there you've set the expectation that the drugwill lower blood pressure.
You essentially have to sign people up for a trial of a "mysterydrug" with no expectation of any effects whatsoever. That way, the mind ofthe study participants is no longer a variable in the outcome of the drugtrial. From there, all the various physiological effects of the patients mustbe tracked. With the patients' minds now out of the picture, you can get anhonest assessment of the genuine chemical action of the drug itself.
Why most clinical trials are scientifically invalid
It is fascinating, of course, that virtually no clinical trials areever conducted in this way. Today's drug trials are almost universallydescribed to patients along with the expectations of the outcome. This has beendone for decades under the false belief that the mind somehow played norole whatsoever in the physiology ofthe body. Conventional medical researchers and scientists incorrectly believedthat chemistry alone would dictate the outcome of the trial. The mind hadnothing to do with it, they claimed.
They were wrong. The mind has everything to do with it. In fact, the mindcan make a placebo "real" and render a drug useless. The mind hasnear total control over the outcome of the trial. Because this has almost neverbeen taken into account, all those clinical trials that ignored the influencevariable of intention are, technically speaking, scientificallyinvalid. There's no way to know whether the outcome of the trial was due to thedrug or the mind.
They were wrong. The mind has everything to do with it. In fact, the mindcan make a placebo "real" and render a drug useless. The mind hasnear total control over the outcome of the trial. Because this has almost neverbeen taken into account, all those clinical trials that ignored the influencevariable of intention are, technically speaking, scientificallyinvalid. There's no way to know whether the outcome of the trial was due to thedrug or the mind.
And that makes the mind a variable in the scientific question of whatis at work in a clinical trial. When the mind is at work, you cannotscientifically claim the achieved results were simply due to the drug itself.Unless, of course, you disavow the influence of the mind. And that is preciselythe mistake that has been made since the dawn of modern medical science.
The pharmaceutical industry's "science" falls apart inthe presence of the mind
Once you understand the power of the mind to either create realphysiological effects in the body or nullify the chemicals beingadministered to the body, you immediately grasp the stunningconclusion: Big Pharma's "science" is not scientific!
Virtually all the results from the tens of thousands of clinical trials thathave been conducted over the last several decades must now be called intoquestion. In which trials did patients produce their own positive resultssimply through the power of their minds after believing that negative sideeffects meant they were taking the "real" drugs?
It is not a question to be taken lightly. This question, in fact, will demolishmodern pharmaceutical "science" once it is fully understood. Thepharmaceuticalindustry, you see, needs the power of the mind to make its drugs appear towork! Without the "wishful thinking" factor engaged, it is altogetherlikely that most pharmaceuticals simply don't work at all.
The truth is that virtually all the effects of the most commonly prescribedpharmaceuticals -- diabetes drugs, blood pressure drugs, painkillers, statindrugs and so on -- can be achieved without using any drugs whatsoever. Theonly cause required to produce the positive effects is the expectation ofpositive results in the minds of the patients.
There are certainly exceptions to this, of course. Anesthesia drugs do notappear to require the active mental participation of patients in order tofunction as expected. Likewise, there are certainly nutrients such as vitamin Dthat function in a certain way in the human body regardless of whether a person"believes" in vitamin D.
The real question, you see, is what happens at the intersection ofmolecular biology and the expectation of the mind? Modern medicalscience has near-zero knowledge on that subject because it has denied theexistence of the mind. Most so-called "skeptics," for example, do notbelieve there is such a thing as the mind. Humans are merely biological robots,they say, and brains are mere molecular machines that carry out deterministicactions based purely on the laws of chemistry and physics. The mind, theyinsist, does not exist.
No wonder their clinical trials fail to take the mind into account. Andthat is why their clinical trials are now revealed as medical selfdelusion. They thought their drugs were working, but it turns out it was thepatients' minds that delivered the results.
The great censorship of the power of the mind
But don't expect the conventional medical industry toacknowledge any of this. In order to continue its charade of"scientifically validated pharmaceuticals," the industry mustdesperately seek to pretend that the mind has nothing whatsoever to do withclinical trials.
That is why the pharmaceutical industry is trying to deny the existence ofthe mind. It's why medical journals are reluctant to publish studies thatinvoke the power of the mind, and it's why medical schools refuse to teachmedical students about mind-body medicine.
The placeboeffect -- perhaps the single most powerful tool for healing -- is utterlydiscarded as worthless by the entire medical profession!
That is why the pharmaceutical industry is trying to deny the existence ofthe mind. It's why medical journals are reluctant to publish studies thatinvoke the power of the mind, and it's why medical schools refuse to teachmedical students about mind-body medicine.
The placeboeffect -- perhaps the single most powerful tool for healing -- is utterlydiscarded as worthless by the entire medical profession!
The mind is so powerful that it can render drugs obsolete. When doctors trulyunderstand and are able to harness the power of the mind, they won't needroutine pharmaceuticals. They will only need to empower patients with thefactually correct belief that they have the power to heal within them, andchemical drugs have only been symbolic metaphorical chemicals that allowed themind to believe healing was taking place.
This is a cultural issue, of course. The culture of our modern world isone of reductionism. Western science refutes the power of the mind and deniesindividuals the power to heal. Healing must come from external intervention, weare taught: through chemicals, radiation or surgery.
In a parallel world, with the exact same biology, consciousness andenvironment, another race of human-like creatures might have chosen a differentpath -- the path of patient empowerment where doctors are mere guideswho teach patients how to heal themselves. Healing is a personal art, done fromthe inside out, not through dangerous chemical interventions. All that isnecessary for this parallel world to become a reality is a shift in thebeliefs of the people. When society accepts as real the power of the mind, itsuddenly becomes believable to the weak-minded masses who always look tofigures of authority to tell them what's real.
But the deeper truth of the matter is that what's real is what you makereal. Your mind, all by itself, can alter your physiology, neutralize toxicdrugs, halt pain and probably even achieve other seemingly miraculous featssuch as re-growing lost limbs. What's necessary to get there isn't technologybut rather belief in the ability of the mind to shape the outcome ofthe body.
It is especially fascinating that this is no longer merely new age talk: It isthe scientifically validated conclusion of rigorous studies involving patientexpectations. Now, the interaction of the body and the mind IS the new science!
About the author: Mike Adams is an award-winning journalist andholistic nutritionist with a passion for teaching people how to improve theirhealth He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guidesand interviews on natural health topics, reaching millions of readers withinformation that is saving lives and improving personal health around theworld. Adams is an independent journalist withstrong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product orcompany. In 2010, Adams co-founded NaturalNews.TV, a natural health videosharing site that has now grown in popularity. He also launched an online retailer ofenvironmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses aportion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also a veteranof the software technology industry, having founded a personalized mass email software product usedto deliver email newsletters to subscribers. Adams is currently the executivedirector of the ConsumerWellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and regularly pursues cycling,nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates. Known as the 'Health Ranger,' Adams ' personal health statistics and mission statementsare located atwww.HealthRanger.org
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