Very interesting - and fits in nicely with Dr Andrew Weil's book Spontaneous Healing - which is a great read if you haven't seen it.
Michael

From http://www.naturalnews.com/z031451_drug_trials_placebo_effect.html

Nearly all drug trials scientifically invalid due to influence of the mind; Big Pharma science dissolves into wishful thinking

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) A new study in Science Translational Medicine has cast doubt over the scientific validity of nearly all randomized, double-blind placebo controlled studies involving pharmaceuticals used on human beings. It turns out that many pharmaceuticals only work because people expect them to, not because they have any "real" chemical effect on the body. As you'll see here, when test subjects were told that they were not receiving painkiller medications -- even though they were -- the medication proved to be completely worthless.

This particular experiment involved applying heat to the legs of test subjects in order to cause pain, then adding a painkiller medication to an IV drip while assessing the subjects' pain levels. When the painkiller drug was present, the test subjects were told about it, and just as expected their pain scores significantly dropped. But when test subjects were told the pain medication had been stopped, their pain levels returned back to the original, non-medicated levels even though the pain medication was secretly still being dripped into 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 drug itself.

Talking to the BBC, Professor Irene Tracey from Oxford University said, "It's phenomenal, it's really cool. It's one of the best analgesics we have and the brain's influence can either vastly increase its effect, or completely remove it." (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12...).

As pointed out by George Lewith, a professor of health research at the University of Southampton, these findings call into question the scientific validity of many randomized clinical trials. He said, "It completely blows cold randomized clinical trials, which don't take into account expectation."

Many pharmaceuticals only work if you believe they do

What the research really means, you see, is that the mind is the main determiner of the effectiveness of many drugs, not the so-called chemical profile of the drugs themselves. This has been proven out again and again with not just painkiller drugs, but also with antidepressant drugs which have 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 the mind makes them real, then why do some drugs appear to out-perform placebo in clinical trials?

The answer to that will probably surprise you: It's because when people are in randomized, placebo-controlled studies, they're usually hoping to get the real drugs, not the placebo. And how do they determine whether they're getting the "real" drugs? By the presence of negative side effects! As those side effects begin to appear -- constipation, sexual disorders, nausea, headaches, etc -- then those participants convince themselves that they received the "real" drugs! And from that point, their mind makes it real! So the blood pressure actually then starts to go down, or their cholesterol numbers drop, and so on.

The patients make real whatever expectation they were given when they were recruited for the drug trial in the first place. Even the act of recruiting people fordrug trials sets an expectation in their minds. Patients, after all, are recruited for a "cancer drug trial" or a "blood pressure drug trial" or some other trial in which the expected outcome is made evident during the recruitment phase.

This is all really important to understand so I'm going to break it down step by step:

Why pharmaceutical "positive" effects are actually generated by the minds of the clinical trial participants:

Step 1: Clinical trial participants are recruited through a trial that is advertised as testing a drug for a particular outcome such as lowering blood pressure, halting cancer, normalizing blood sugar, etc. This sets the expectation of the drug effects in the minds of the patients even before the trial begins.

Step 2: When the trial begins, the clinical trial participants are told that half will be given the "real" drug, and the other half will be given a placebo, but it's a blind study, so no one knows whether they're receiving the drug or the placebo.

Step 3: Study participants begin to take the pills, but they don't know whether they're getting drugs or placebo.

Step 4: Those participants who are receiving the real drugs begin to show toxicside effects (because most pharmaceuticals are toxic to the body). This excites them because they conclude that they are on the "real" drugs!

Step 5: Those participants who conclude they are on the "real" drugs then, through the power of their minds, cause their bodies to make real the physiological effects that were imprinted in their minds in step one! Whatever drug expectation was explained to them before the trial, in other words, is suddenly made real by the patient's mind.

Step 6: Meanwhile, those patients receiving the placebo pills and having no side effects convince themselves that they aren't receiving the "real" drugs and therefore they should experience no positive physiological effects. So their mind makes that real, too, and they get no benefit from the whole experience.

Step 7: After the end of the clinical trial, the researchers compare the results of the placebo group against the results of the drug group, and guess what? The drug looks like it performed better! But was the drug the actual cause of that? Not at all: It was the expectations of the study subjects that made the effects real. The drugs, in other words, only look good as a result of wishful thinking.

As you can see here, this calls into question the scientific validity of every randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled drug study that has ever been conducted. The critical scientific failure they all share, you see, is that as part of the clinical trial, the researchers set the expectations of the drug's results in the minds of the patients. It is those minds that then made the effects real, not necessarily the drugs.

This leads to the fascinating conclusion that in today's medical system, many drugs may only work when patients expect them to because it is the patient's mind creating the physiological effects, not the drug itself.

So how do you get around this and design a truly scientific trial 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 must eliminate the trial subjects from learning of any expectation of the drug's effects. In other words, you can't sign patients up for a "blood pressure drug trial" because right there you've set the expectation that the drug will lower blood pressure.

You essentially have to sign people up for a trial of a "mystery drug" with no expectation of any effects whatsoever. That way, the mind of the study participants is no longer a variable in the outcome of the drug trial. From there, all the various physiological effects of the patients must be tracked. With the patients' minds now out of the picture, you can get an honest 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 are ever conducted in this way. Today's drug trials are almost universally described to patients along with the expectations of the outcome. This has been done for decades under the false belief that the mind somehow played no role whatsoever in the physiology of the body. Conventional medical researchers and scientists incorrectly believed that chemistry alone would dictate the outcome of the trial. The mind had nothing to do with it, they claimed.

They were wrong. The mind has everything to do with it. In fact, the mind can make a placebo "real" and render a drug useless. The mind has near total control over the outcome of the trial. Because this has almost never been taken into account, all those clinical trials that ignored the influence variable of intention are, technically speaking, scientifically invalid. There's no way to know whether the outcome of the trial was due to the drug or the mind.

And that makes the mind a variable in the scientific question of what is at work in a clinical trial. When the mind is at work, you cannot scientifically claim the achieved results were simply due to the drug itself. Unless, of course, you disavow the influence of the mind. And that is precisely the mistake that has been made since the dawn of modern medical science.

The pharmaceutical industry's "science" falls apart in the presence of the mind

Once you understand the power of the mind to either create real physiological effects in the body or nullify the chemicals being administered to the body, you immediately grasp the stunning conclusion: Big Pharma's "science" is not scientific!

Virtually all the results from the tens of thousands of clinical trials that have been conducted over the last several decades must now be called into question. In which trials did patients produce their own positive results simply through the power of their minds after believing that negative side effects meant they were taking the "real" drugs?

It is not a question to be taken lightly. This question, in fact, will demolish modern pharmaceutical "science" once it is fully understood. The pharmaceutical industry, you see, needs the power of the mind to make its drugs appear to work! Without the "wishful thinking" factor engaged, it is altogether likely that most pharmaceuticals simply don't work at all.

The truth is that virtually all the effects of the most commonly prescribed pharmaceuticals -- diabetes drugs, blood pressure drugs, painkillers, statin drugs and so on -- can be achieved without using any drugs whatsoever. The only cause required to produce the positive effects is the expectation of positive results in the minds of the patients.

There are certainly exceptions to this, of course. Anesthesia drugs do not appear to require the active mental participation of patients in order to function as expected. Likewise, there are certainly nutrients such as vitamin D that 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 of molecular biology and the expectation of the mind? Modern medical science has near-zero knowledge on that subject because it has denied the existence of the mind. Most so-called "skeptics," for example, do not believe there is such a thing as the mind. Humans are merely biological robots, they say, and brains are mere molecular machines that carry out deterministic actions based purely on the laws of chemistry and physics. The mind, they insist, does not exist.

No wonder their clinical trials fail to take the mind into account. And that is why their clinical trials are now revealed as medical self delusion. They thought their drugs were working, but it turns out it was the patients' minds that delivered the results.

The great censorship of the power of the mind

But don't expect the conventional medical industry to acknowledge any of this. In order to continue its charade of "scientifically validated pharmaceuticals," the industry must desperately seek to pretend that the mind has nothing whatsoever to do with clinical trials.

That is why the pharmaceutical industry is trying to deny the existence of the mind. It's why medical journals are reluctant to publish studies that invoke the power of the mind, and it's why medical schools refuse to teach medical students about mind-body medicine.

The placebo effect -- perhaps the single most powerful tool for healing -- is utterly discarded as worthless by the entire medical profession!

The mind is so powerful that it can render drugs obsolete. When doctors truly understand and are able to harness the power of the mind, they won't need routine pharmaceuticals. They will only need to empower patients with the factually correct belief that they have the power to heal within them, and chemical drugs have only been symbolic metaphorical chemicals that allowed the mind to believe healing was taking place.

This is a cultural issue, of course. The culture of our modern world is one of reductionism. Western science refutes the power of the mind and denies individuals the power to heal. Healing must come from external intervention, we are taught: through chemicals, radiation or surgery.

In a parallel world, with the exact same biology, consciousness and environment, another race of human-like creatures might have chosen a different path -- the path of patient empowerment where doctors are mere guides who teach patients how to heal themselves. Healing is a personal art, done from the inside out, not through dangerous chemical interventions. All that is necessary for this parallel world to become a reality is a shift in the beliefs of the people. When society accepts as real the power of the mind, it suddenly becomes believable to the weak-minded masses who always look to figures of authority to tell them what's real.

But the deeper truth of the matter is that what's real is what you make real. Your mind, all by itself, can alter your physiology, neutralize toxic drugs, halt pain and probably even achieve other seemingly miraculous feats such as re-growing lost limbs. What's necessary to get there isn't technology but rather belief in the ability of the mind to shape the outcome of the body.

It is especially fascinating that this is no longer merely new age talk: It is the scientifically validated conclusion of rigorous studies involving patient expectations. Now, the interaction of the body and the mind IS the new science!
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This entry was posted on February 23, 2011 at 2:12 PM and has received 943 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.