good stuff about placebos snipped< I maintain that alternative modalities, unlike proved modalities recognized by medical science, work almost entirely by placebo effect. Take away the placebo effect by performing controlled blind studies, and the therapeutic effect of the alternative modality evaporates, like the Emperor's New Clothes. Ed Not true in all cases, Ed. There have been contolled, blind studies on several alternative modalities, including acupuncture and herbals, and the Emporor's clothes remain intact. Granted, there are some remedies that are useless - and they rely on a high placebo effect. But to some extent, all remedies rely on some confidence by the patient that treatment will work. My 2p Cissy

 <<<<Van Howe has had problems getting some of his articles past reviewers of American medical journals. Criticism of circumcision forces professionals to revisit issues that are painful for them... Todd D. Gastaldo, D.C. remarks: Mr. Falk is right on the money... On November 19, 1987, the New England Journal of Medicine published Harvard pain expert KJS Anand’s admission that he and others had used phony babies can't feel pain neurology for decades. [N Eng J Med 1987;317:1322] Anne B. Fletcher, M.D. editorialized, in that same November 19 issue of the Journal, that the pain of circumcision is “incurred by infants.” Anand later told me that he had submitted his paper to the Journal the year before, but was told it would be “too inflammatory.” I recounted my conversation with Prof. Anand in a 1989-90 issue of Midwifery Today in which I discussed the European medical proposal to stave off America's threatened recommendation for universal newborn infant circumcision, with breastfeeding, strict-rooming-in, kneeling birth and research into applying maternal fecal matter to the infant penis.  See Winberg et al. The prepuce: A mistake of nature? The Lancet 1989]. On December 23, 1987, Dr. Ronald L. Poland finally replied to my letter of October 11, 1987 asking that pediatricians act to end routine infant circumcision since there were no indications and since AAP had just perpetuated, uncorrected, organized medicine's phony babies can't feel pain neurology. Dr. Poland confirmed that the AAP considered routine circumcision “unnecessary surgery,” and noted that the AAP was forming a Task Force to study circumcision. On March 8, 1988, the CMA ignored its own Scientific Board and proclaimed routine infant circumcision “an effective public health measure.”  Two days later, the AMA issued a press release stating that it would be “more humane” if babies were punctured twice with local anesthetic prior to circumcision. A week after the CMA and AMA proclamations, the AAP held the first meeting of its Task Force on Circumcision.  One year later, the AAP still hadn’t found any medical indications for routine infant circumcision. Three years later, Newsweek reporter Debra Rosenberg began her 1992 Technology Review article on the subject by stating that the AAP twice discounted the procedure [in the 70s], and she closed by stating, though [AAP Task Force chairman] Schoen believes the pendulum will swing back toward circumcision, the AAP has not changed its formal position denouncing the procedure. [Rosenberg D. Circumcision circumspection. Technology Review (Jul)1992;95(5):17.  Debra Rosenberg, c/o Newsweek, 31 St. James Ave., Boston MA 02116, (617) 350-0300]) AAP Circumcision Task Force Schoen's 1992 discussion with Ms. Rosenberg perhaps explains why the AAP's 1988-9 media propaganda was so thick that when the AAP finally reported in Pediatrics that there STILL weren't any medical indications for the mutilations, the Medical Tribune was moved to inform physicians that the AAP actually (again) found NO medical indications: MEDICAL TRIBUNE 30:16 (8 June 1989)          FORGET THOSE HEADLINES ABOUT CIRCUMCISION             AAP IS AGAINST ROUTINE CIRCUMCISION http://www.cirp.org/CIRP/news/1989.06.08%3aMedicalTribune In 1995, Circumcisionist Edgar Schoen, MD told Australian physician Terry Russell, We are now at a point that newborn circumcision is analogous to immunisation. [Russell T. Letter. Medical Observer (20Jan)1995, Level 2, 100 Bay Road, Waverton, NSW 2060 AUSTRALIA] Dr. Russell then embellished Schoen’s vaccination/circumcision comparison by inferring that circumcision prevents HIV seroconversion and AIDS. The following year (1996), in Scientific American, Australian authors John and Pat Caldwell claimed that the African studies indicating that circumcision prevents AIDS are sound; they just weren’t discussed by the medical profession in the late 1980s because many did not wish to revive...[the notion]...that circumcision was a meaningless mutilation.  [Caldwell JC, Caldwell P. The African AIDS Epidemic. Scientific American (Mar)1996;274(3):62-8] WHAT!!??   California MDs rather OPENLY surfed the wave of AIDS hysteria to declare that it had been confirmed in Africa that circumcision prevents transmission of HIV.  Caldwell and Caldwell [1996] somehow forgot to mention that the members of the CMA House of Delegates ignored their own Scientific Board to officially declare that newborn circumcision had been confirmed an effective public health measure - (as opposed to being a meaningless mutilation that could send most of the medical profession to prison). I personally think CMA member Dr. Schoen was in Australia promoting routine infant circumcision because California physicians stand to go to prison for their mass mutilation of infants. In California, each infliction of unjustifiable physical pain carries a six-year prison sentence [Section 273a California Penal Code] and there aren't enough M.D.’s in the state to serve all the prison time... I first learned of medicine’s longstanding babies can’t feel pain hoax when the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) perpetuated phony babies can’t feel pain neurology in 1987. [Pediatrics 1987;80:446] In the same year, a national study by nurses determined that doctors could not agree as to whether babies feel pain. [J Obstet Gynecol Neonatal Nurs 1987;16(6):387] As alluded to above, on Oct. 11, 1987, I exposed the phony neurology (which was stated in Pediatrics 1987;80:446) and informed the AAP that circumcision was mass child abuse and that it should stop immediately. As is also alluded to above, the AAP (Ronald Poland, M.D.) waited two months and wrote back, confirming that there were no medical indications, and stating that an AAP Task Force on Circumcision was being formed to study the matter. The month before I received Dr. Poland's letter (Nov 1987), the New England Journal of Medicine finally published Anand and Hickey's inflammatory paper - they one the Journal had been sitting on for over a year... I learned later from Task Force chairman Edgar Schoen, M.D., that the meetings would be secret.  Nurse Milos of NO CIRC published Schoen’s seemingly anti-circumcision poem, Ode to the Foreskin, assuring members of NO CIRC that Schoen was opposed to circumcision (see above). She was very wrong.  NO CIRC is the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers which may still be _base_d in San Anselmo, CA. When I informed the Medical Board in 1987 that physicians were using phony “babies can’t feel pain” neurology to mutilate babies with no medical
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snippage< I think it must be very rare for a doctor to give a true placebo with no pharmacologic activity. However, I think the effect of some drugs (such as expectorants)  is largely placebo. The placebo effect is real and comes with any therapeutic modality, and may in fact enhance its effectiveness. It is a bonus so to speak. I maintain that alternative modalities, unlike proved modalities recognized by medical science, work almost entirely by placebo effect. Take away the placebo effect by performing controlled blind studies, and the therapeutic effect of the alternative modality evaporates, like the Emperor's New Clothes. On the same note, unless you yourself have conducted a blind controlled study you cannot either prove or disprove your placebo hypothesis.  And even if one blind controlled study proved your hypothesis, it doesn't make a blanket statement about all alternative modalities.  But then, being a doctor, you would know this.  I'm preaching to the masses here.  If you have published your study in a peer reviewed journal, I would enjoy reading it. The World Health Organization recognizes acupuncture and some herbal remedies for treatment of some symptoms (back pain is one example, specific allergies another).  I'm assuming they did thier homework through bonafide research.  Might be worth looking into. In the end, if the person actually does feel better after using an alternative treatment, after all other available medical options have been exhausted, who am I to deny them the right to feel healthy?  Something else to think about. -Felicia *************************************************************************** ***           This message brought to you on 100% recycled electrons Felicia Friesema                                         This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it President - Pre-Vet Student Association, UMBC             This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   Beware the lollipop of mediocrity.  Lick it once, and you suck forever. *************************************************************************** ***

I AM a hypochondriac (dx'd as such) and can tell you that when this is happening to me there is nothing I wouldn't give to just be well like the rest of you.  When a doctor tells a hypochondriac that he isn't sick, he is lying.  Hypochondria, just like depression is a sickness and can be treated. Allegra

I think it must be very rare for a doctor to give a true placebo with no pharmacologic activity. However, I think the effect of some drugs (such as expectorants)  is largely placebo. The placebo effect is real and comes with any therapeutic modality, and may in fact enhance its effectiveness. It is a bonus so to speak. I maintain that alternative modalities, unlike proved modalities recognized by medical science, work almost entirely by placebo effect. Take away the placebo effect by performing controlled blind studies, and the therapeutic effect of the alternative modality evaporates, like the Emperor's New Clothes.                                                           <snip Hello Ed, I just needed to interject here to say that Dr. Herbert Benson, MD and Marg Stark have written a fascinating book called, Timeless Healing.   It has many studies it in that relate to the placebo effect or as they call it, Remembered Wellness. Here is an excerpt: Dr. Stewart Wolf's 1950 study of women who endured persistent nausea and vomiting during pregnancy.  These patients swallowed small balloon-tipped tubes that, once positioned in their stomachs, allowed researchers to record the contractions associated with waves of nausea and vomiting. Then they were given a drug they were told would cure the problem.  In fact, they were given the opposite- syrup of ipecac-a substance that causes vomiting. Remarkably, the patients' nausea and vomiting ceased entirely and their stomach contractions, as measured through the balloons, returned to normal.  Because they believed they received anti- nausea medicine, the women reversed the proven action of a powerful drug. Wolf, S. Effects of Suggestion and Conditioning on the Action of Chemical Agents in Human Subjects: The Pharmacology of Placebos. Journal of Clinical Investigation 29 (1950):100-9 How would you explain the ability of these women to reverse the proven action of a powerful drug? How would you account for the stomach contractions, as measured by the balloon, to have stopped? The proven effect of syrup of ipecac was reversed by the placebo effect.  So much for modern science. I highly recommend anyone interested in alternative's pick up a copy of this book. Jackie

Dr. Uthman's gripe with alternativists is similar to my gripe with medicalists (MDs) - except medicalists (MDs) dressed up a big part of their religion - their most frequent surgical behavior toward males - in religious clothes...and now they are trying, belatedly, to dress it up in scientific clothes... [remainder snipped, since I observe the prime directive, _primum non nocere_ ] Geez, I set up all these fancy filters on my newsreader to kill all articles on the stupid and pointless circumcision argument, and this endless diatribe slips through anyway. Moreover, it gets _labeled_ because it has my name in the subject line! There ain't no justice! Ed _________________________________________________________ Ed Uthman, MD < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it                   Nemo liber est qui <http://www.neosoft.com/~uthman/      corpore servit. Pathologist                                       -Seneca Houston/Richmond, TX, USA Todd D. Gastaldo, D.C.