PBS: Scientific American Frontiers - The Wonder Pill

[greyl]

It's on right now where I am, very interesting.

This episode explores the medical value of placebos and what host Alan Alda calls the "chemistry between a hopeful patient and a caring doctor." Alda surveys the placebo effect on patients with Parkinson's disease. And he checks out a test study in which healthy people are given cold viruses and treated with either medication or sugar pills, and another in which a volunteer is given a "sham" acupuncture treatment. "While it may be all in the mind," Alda concludes, "the placebo effect is real and reasonable."

[FULL_METAL_HAT]

1. It is excellent! Watch Online!

Watch Online

The show "The Wonder Pill" premiered February 18, 2003.

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1307/video/watchonline.htm

Click Play on each segment.

There are many lessons in this documentary. Well worth watching!

{B^> FMH

A DIFFERENT WAY TO HEAL

ALAN ALDA Imagine a scene like this: You come into your doctor's office with a problem that won't go away. You've had the usual round of blood tests and maybe some expensive scans. Finally the doctor is ready to prescribe some medicine for you. And she gives you a choice: some heavy hitting drugs with risks of side effects, or this: a pill which she says is proven effective in some one-third to one-half of patients taking it. It's been in use for years. It's been through thousands of clinical trials and has minimal side effects. No one's quite sure how it works, although some new research has been coming up with interesting ideas about how it affects the brain. Oh, and one more thing -- and she sort of slips this in there -- it doesn't actually contain any active drug. So, what do you think? Would you give it a try? The pill you were offered was a placebo, a sugar pill. Placebos are a hot topic in medicine right now. The placebo effect is the often positive response that patients get to a sham medical treatment -- not just a fake pill, but in some cases even a fake surgical procedure. Recently researchers have discovered that in some cases, placebos cause physical changes in the brains of people taking them. This has led to surge of interest in understanding the placebo effect. And while your doctor may never offer you a sugar pill instead of the real drug, there's real interest now in trying to turn the placebo effect into a useful therapeutic tool. Which is why we're starting our show here: among the graves of people who died often very young, from diseases that pre-scientific medicine was unable to cure. This is the grave of Dr. Harriet Hunt, one of the first women physicians in the country. What was it that Harriet Hunt and her mostly male colleagues in the healing profession were able to offer their patients?
Full transcript here: http://www.pbs.org/saf/1307/resources/transcript.htm

[greyl]

2. Thanks for adding that info. :)

I didn't know it originally aired in 2003.

[Mistwell]

3. So - find a better way to trick ourselves?

What we need is a pill to trick our mind into thinking the pill has the best possible effect on our system :)

[greyl]

4. That's the conundrum.

We can confidently say that the placebo effect accounts for over 30% of the positive results in clinical trials of medicine. How can we assure that consumers don't spend money on exhorbitantly priced shams (no better than a placebo), yet somehow utilize the placebo effect in honest healthcare?

It points to how important the doctor/patient relationship is.