I think this is basically a description of what is already happening. It’s just that the “black market” has become a legitimate thing that people defend. I think we need more caring doctors and a rethinking of the ethics of prescribing actual placebos, especially in light of that study saying that placebos work even when people know they are placebos.
Of course “more caring doctors” is a big problem. Doctors have to put up with a lot of people making a lot of demands on them and that wears at people. Also, I don’t think their billing model supports them spending time with patients to help beyond offering tests and prescriptions (at least where I live).
I agree with that last part. If someone feels better because they talk to their fortune teller every other week, then I can stand back and say, “Well, I guess if you like doing it [and you aren’t driving yourself into financial problems paying for it] then enjoy your fortune telling.” I might think the fortune teller is a charlatan, but they are selling a service to someone who is benefiting from it (again, assuming they aren’t asking for ever more money from their whale client). But this homeopathy stuff - it’s really frustrating because it actually is a form of magic, but it’s being sold as medicine, and I think a lot of people are genuinely confused.
Fun fact: Pinkeye seems to be a condition much more common in North America then in (continental) Europe. Or maybe in 99% of the cases it is not considered serious enough to mention (and treat) where I come from. So from my point of view you probably just got conned out of some bucks for a treatment not really necessary.
I didn’t buy a remedy, so I got conned out of nothing. Pink-Eye is a bacterial infection that will go away on it’s own, or it can be treated and eliminated in short order, -with real medicine-,
or, you can give someone 20$ for a fake drug and have the same effect as not taking anything.
Because the box claimed to cure pink-eye rather than stating it was a placebo with no medicinal effect, it was a homeopathic product intended to cheat people out of money for water with nothing in it.
Sure, but if you say “There are benefits to homeopathy” without adding in “but it also kills a hell of a lot of people” (which seems to be the case here), you’re certainly not painting a very accurate picture, and there’s a reasonable argument to be made that you are defending homeopathy, if only mildly.
Conjunctivitis can also be viral, and at least back when my kids got it (3-5 years ago), there wasn’t really an easy way to tell the difference.
I’m totally for people being educated about their treatment, but it seems weird to demand such an abundance of sceptical information on placebos specifically, since many pharmaceutical drugs are also largely placebo effect. So if we’re going this route, I would say we should also put warnings on - for example - Prozac saying that 90% of the effects of this (expensive) drug can be achieved with sugar pills.
That’s a really good way of putting it. But I would say that the mainstream drug industry also deliberately mystifies drug-based medical treatment, and so it’s no surprise that many people come to understand drugs in general as a semi-magical thing.
I mean, look at the way drugs are marketed - the implications of how they’ll make you feel and the problems they will solve for you are way out of line with the scientific results. Like I mentioned, many of these drugs have marginal or no active effect for lots of people either, and largely achieve their effects through placebo. But since they’re marketed as miracle cures with no defense of the how or why, that encourages people to believe in the existence of miracle cures.
This is correct. Also, both of you please keep in mind that it’s not only the drug at play here. It’s also the patient, especially with psychological matters. Prozac, being the hammer, might or might not be right as not all patients are nails, and different patients are different sizes and types of nails, with complications and comorbidities. So, converse all you want about Prozac as a “thing” but don’t forget the patients are in this.
I should have said viral because it was and in most cases is viral. Bacterial is more serious and requires treatment (with real medicine)
Thanks for the correction, it also demonstrates how the fake homeopathic pink-eye remedy could cause real harm. In most cases, like my household’s, it is viral and goes away, but in some cases it is bacterial and requires antibiotics or it will damage the eye. Thus if you have only 2 things claiming to be remedies for the bacterial version, and one of them is false… no amount of placebo is going to cure your bacterial eye infection.
It may not be placebo. It could be varying efficacy. Different people are different. Different diseases are different in different people! You cannot call all of it placebo. It is much more complicated than that.
That’s why I added that it can’t be a standalone drug, if prescribed thus it is being mis-prescribed. Prozac is harmful without supportive treatment, such that would determine if it were helpful or not.
It wasn’t for me. When I was going to chiro for my back, I had to go back once a month or my back pain would return. I gave up on that, and went for physiotherapy instead, and I haven’t had to go back for years, now.
Sorry but I have to point out that the fact that actual medicine is abused in the multiplicable ways that homeopathic remedies are abused doesn’t make it comparative. Homeopathic starts at Zero evidence. Medicine doesn’t. The fact of western medicine quacks and nebulous, promise filled marketing in both doesn’t serve to change that Zero.
