[QUOTE 5406922, member: 9609"]
The question I would now like to ask is; If the Placebo effect of a Placebo is around 60% . Then surely there is likely to be a 60% Placebo effect of a real medicine, and since many real medicines only have a 60% success rate then .....[/QUOTE]
I don't recall the 60% figure - maybe I wasn't paying attention - but one thing I did find particularly interesting was the disparity between the quick appointment figures and the lengthy appointment figures. It brought to mind a GP interview I saw years back, where she said that most of her time was spent with a hard core of people who had genuine problems, but the problems were hard to disassociate entirely from the fact that pretty much all of them were lonely single people. "What they need most of all - and what actually alleviates their symptoms - is someone to talk to."
Why was the programme set in Blackpool? Because it has the UK's highest rate of back problems. Is that by chance? Or does it reflect the fact that Blackpool must be a singularly depressing and dead end place to live? Do one in six, say, Egyptians suffer from chronic back problems? I would suspect not. Even though they probably score far worse than Blackpool in terms of all the UN's Social Development Goals, which supposedly track quality of life - things like diet, education, shelter, access to healthcare and clean water. And I suspect that that's because back pain has less to do with education and access to water than with the chance to live a meaningful life. Something which I suspect is in desperately short supply in Blackpool - and in many other 'has been' places in Britain, whether the 'been & now gone' is steel or shipbuilding, coal or cotton.
I'd be very interested to see that trial run again, like for like, but without television crews. I wonder whether the figures would be as high without the whole circus surrounding it, implicitly saying to these people: 'You matter. You're interesting. You're going to be on the telly!'. I suspect the figures would still be positive (I too am a great believer in placebo, and think it is massively undervalued in our science-obsessed medical culture) but I also suspect they would not be as positive.
But yes, fascinating programme - and hopefully one that will be noticed, and thought about, 'where it matters'.
