Introduction The Placebo: Is It Much Ado about Nothing? Arthur K. Shapiro and Elaine Shapiro Clinical Reflections on the Placebo Phenomenon Howard Spiro The Nocebo Phenomenon: Scope and Foundations Robert A. Hahn The Doctor as Therapeutic Agent: A Placebo Effect Research Agenda Howard Brody Toward a Neurobiology of Placebo Analgesia Howard L. Fields and Donald D. Price The Contribution of Desire and Expectation to Placebo Analgesia: Implications for New Research Strategies Donald D. Price And Howard L. Fields The Role of Conditioning in Pharmacotherapy Robert Ader Specifying Nonspecifics: Psychological Mechanisms of Placebo Effects Irving Kirsch Placebo, Pain, and Belief: A Biocultural Model David B. Morris Placebo: Conversations at the Disciplinary Borders Edited by Anne Harrington Contributors Index
Anne Harrington is Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University.
This book, drawing on contributions from fields as diverse as
cultural anthropology, religion, pharmacology and molecular
biology, reviews the roles of placebos in history and discusses the
difficulties in making sense of them. At a time when quackery costs
the nation an estimated $30 billion a year, such research couldn’t
be more timely.
*Chicago Tribune*
The Placebo Effect helps to explain why medicine appears to be some
way off relinquishing the certainty of faith for the uncertainty of
science… This edited collection of reviews…repays reading for the
nuggets of insight it gives into health care and its as yet not-so
scientific underpinnings.
*Nature*
To understand the placebo effect is to grasp simultaneously the
success and the failure of medicine. This yin-yang comes through
clearly in The Placebo Effect, which is based on the proceedings of
a conference at Harvard University in late 1994. The speakers and
discussants were all experts. Their charge at the conference,
according to one participant, was ‘to create some destabilization
of current thinking with respect to placebo effects.’ In this the
text succeeds admirably… The power and the prevalence of placebo
effects should interest any healer, and so should this book. From
it one will learn that ultimately the placebo effect cannot be
understood, for once we discover some detail of its mechanism, that
knowledge will no longer be considered a placebo effect.
*The Lancet*
This book is based on a conference at Harvard University in
December 1994, sponsored by the Harvard Mind, Brain, Behavior
Interfaculty Initiative. It brought under one roof some of the
leading authorities on placebo and placebo effects, giving many of
the chapters the unique quality of coming straight from the ‘the
horse’s mouth.’ The placebo has become a familiar concept among
biomedical researchers and practitioners since it became a
prerequisite in randomized, controlled trials in the middle of this
century. Yet the state of knowledge about the placebo effect in
phenomenological terms…and as a neurobiologic construct…is still
inadequate… This book highlights and aims at interdisciplinary
dialogue… It will make fascinating reading for clinicians,
neurobiologists, and students, as well as for philosophers and
ethicists. More specifically, the book should be considered by
those involved in all aspects of clinical pharmacology and
therapeutics.
*New England Journal of Medicine*
The concluding section [of The Placebo Effect] is almost too rich
with ideas to be digested in a single session… As Anne Harrington
states in her well-written introduction, the conference [on which
The Placebo Effect was based] ended with no consensus, but it had
given scientists and humanists the opportunity ‘to stretch in ways
that promised to leave none of the parties involved in the
undertaking unchanged.’ [The Placebo Effect] may offer [its]
readers a similar opportunity.
*Isis*
The book is well worth reading for those with an interest in the
subject. It is thought provoking and in many respects
extraordinary.
*Fact: Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies*
The Placebo Effect…brings together some of the leading authorities
to describe the state of the field, as it appears from their
several disciplinary perspectives, and to outline future directions
for research.
*Medical History*
This book sets out to show that the placebo effect is a ‘real’
entity in its own right, one that has much to teach us about how
symbols, settings, and human relationships literally get under our
skin.
*The Therapist*
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