unfortunate because the placebo plays at least as important a role in the process of healing and recovery as
an expensive drug or sophisticated medical machinery.
A typical example of this is the drug digitalis, which has been used by doctors for over 200 years to
treat heart disease, despite the fact that its long-term benefits and safety have never been proven. A major
three-year double-blind control study (New England Journal of Medicine, 1997) conducted by The
Digitalis Investigation Group showed that out of 3,397 heart patients who received digitalis, 1,181
patients had died by the end of the study period. Compare this with the 1,194 who died out of 3,403
patients who had received a placebo, and it becomes clear that digitalis is no better than a sugar pill in
preventing death through heart disease. Still it remains the preferred treatment (over the placebo). Is it
possible that those individuals in the digitalis group who didn't die during the course of the study actually
survived not because of taking digitalis but because of the same reasons the individuals in the placebo
group survived? Most likely so, given the almost identical mortality figures. As shown by this study,
digitalis's only value was to trigger a placebo effect, just as the dummy drug did. In other words, any
benefits of the drug besides being a trigger for the placebo response are non-existent.
During medical training, every would-be doctor has to face the unpleasant fact that drugs themselves
cannot induce a healing response. A drug may work in only 35 percent of the people who receive it. The
rest of them may have either no results or become worse because of the drug’s side effects. Doctors also
know that a patient has a much greater chance of improving with a certain drug if they guarantee an
improvement. They have learned that a patient can get better by merely looking at a medicine. However,
this effect depends more on the imaginative power and the trusting nature of the patient than it does on the
medicine itself.
The Miracle Of Spontaneous Healing
Although modern medicine has virtually stumbled over the healing mechanism of the body, it still has
not recognized it as such. Almost all of the scientific studies conducted on the thousands of drugs and
treatments applied by medical doctors throughout the world included the placebo effect. Although the
placebo effect is a purely subjective response by the patient or the subject being tested, it somehow
became an essential factor for medical research to be considered objective and reliable. Nevertheless, the
placebo effect, which represents the body’s own healing mechanism, has never been the subject of
research. After all, you cannot patent the placebo healing response and make money from selling it.
Instead of learning about the body’s healing mechanisms, all the attention has been focused on testing
medical drugs or procedures as profitable modalities for the treatment of symptoms of disease. Since these
drugs or treatments cannot heal anything—only the body can—they have nothing in them to encourage
healing except the potential to act as a placebo. Considering the fact that suppression of symptoms has
nothing to do with cure, these approaches can be only of secondary value, if indeed they have any value
at all.
Moreover, it is erroneous to assume that the improvement of symptoms following a particular
treatment must necessarily result from that treatment. Treatments have no healing powers of their own
and remain ineffective unless they are able to work as triggers for the placebo or healing response by the
body. In addition, treatments geared merely toward getting rid of the symptoms of disease with no regard
to its causes, have nothing to do with real healing. Bringing temporary relief to the symptoms may be
very desirable for the patient and gratifying to his doctor, but in the long-term, such an approach makes it
increasingly difficult for the body to heal itself. Oftentimes, this leads to chronic illness. True healing
occurs because of the existing mind/body connection, the removal of internal congestion, and the body's
own inherent healing power.