The biological power of the placebo effect. The power of placebos to ameliorate symptoms has been with us for centuries. Western medicine today is finding it increasingly difficult to ignore the efficacy of placebos. In some clinical trials with placebos as controls, inert or sham replicas of active pharmaceutical drugs and even sham surgeries have been found to be as beneficial as the intervention being tested. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Kathryn Hall examines the power of placebos, showing how their effects can influence our clinical trials, clinical encounters and, collectively, Hall argues, our public health. Hall, who has studied the placebo effect for years, reviews the history of the placebo in medicine, tracing its evolution from quackery and patent medicine to its use as a control in clinical trials. She considers the ways that expectations and learning affect our response to placebos; advances in neuroimaging that reveal the inner workings of the placebo effect; the “nocebo” effect; placebo controls in randomized clinical trials; and the use of psychological profiles and genetics to predict individual placebo response. The effects of placebos have been hiding in plain sight; with this book, Hall helps bring them into clearer view.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have had to defend themselves from a barrage of criticisms throughout their history. In this book David Jopling argues that the changes achieved through therapy are really just functions of placebos that rally the mind's native healing powers. It is a bold new work that delivers yet another blow to Freud and his followers.

This is the first book to critically review the mechanisms of placebo effects across all medical conditions, diseases and therapies. It is the definitive text on the placebo effect, and will be essential for researchers and clinicians in all medical specialties.

The Placebo Effect in Clinical Practice brings together what we know about the mechanisms behind the placebo response, as well as the procedures that promote these responses, in order to provide a focused and concise overview on how current knowledge can be applied in treatment settings.

Whether online or in the local pet store, there is a bewildering variety of pet healthcare products and services to choose from. Diets and supplements, ancient herbs and folk remedies, and even high-tech treatments like hyperbaric oxygen tanks and laser therapy. Everything promises to give your pet better health and a longer life, and isn't that what every pet owner wants? But how do you know if all of these products do what they claim? Are they safe? If they really are miraculous cures, why are so many offered only on the Internet or by a few veterinarians specializing in "alternative medicine?" McKenzie, a vet with twenty years of experience and the former president of the Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine Association, helps pet owners and veterinary professionals understand the claims and the evidence, allowing them to make better choices for their companions and patients.

A senior surgeon suggests that many commonly performed operations are not necessary and that any benefits they offer are a placebo. For many complaints and conditions the benefits from surgery are lower, and the risks higher, than you or your surgeon think. In this book you will see how commonly performed operations can be found to be useless or even harmful when properly evaluated. Of course no surgeon is recommending invasive surgery in bad faith, but Ian Harris argues that the evidence for the success for many common operations, including knee arthroscopies, back fusion or cardiac stenting, become current accepted practice without full examination of the evidence. The placebo effect may be real, but is it worth the recovery time, expense and discomfort?