The first example. It could be justified because it has given the race mechanics an answer. It's the riders fault not the bikes. If he came back and said there's no difference then they know its the bike. The placebo is a lot harder. Homeopathy doesn't work didn't Barry Sheene try it? there are circumstances where it will work. It's all in the mind and even so called experts only know a tiny proportion of what the mind can do As for religion you can't say that's a lie no more than I can. If they both truly believe in god then to them it is not a lie regardless of what others think. Not only that the law backs them up but I am not going into that
After a close mate of mine was put on a Placebos ( suffering from cancer ) I was horrified and asked him to get back to hospital and get off it and have some proper treatment as this wasn't to be messed with, he didn't and we buried him 9 months later. For me you can stick the Placebos where the sun don't shine. Steve
Pete I take it that your statement that- Homeopathy is a lie, is based on your assumption that because the substance has been diluted so many times that there is not even an atom of the original substance existing after dilution, how can it be efficacious?
Last year over 50 million people bought a 3mm drill bit..................but they didn't want it............. ............they wanted a 3mm hole. Therefore in my mind if something achieves a desired result, no matter how skank the idea is, then it served the purpose.....just a means to an end. AL
Sorry I'm out of here, is it the norm now to use such big words that I,m excluded, coz I is thick. I'm an ordinary bloke with an unextraordinary knowledge of big words ,and I cant be arsed to look em up. booh hoo :frown:
Steady on, PJ, we're all ordinary blokes, we could all do with gaining extra knowledge, and you're not excluded, or thick. Do you think your brain could do with a little more exercise? But that's up to you.
"... treated on its merits..." Yes indeed. So how are we to evaluate those merits? What basis is there for evaluating a situation and deciding how to treat it? Are there some underlying ethical criteria to be applied? So what are they?
OK Pete. Well I just went to the shop ,came out and put a quid in the action aid box , maybe my money has gone to some African warlord I dont know,but I dont care I feel better . Is that the placebo effect.
It is evidently not efficacious in the sense of having a chemical effect on the body as conventional drugs do. But it may still have a psychological effect in the way placebos do. Is that an 'assumption'? Yes, in the sense that I assume a sample of pure water with no drug whatever in it is pure water and not a drug - really that is more a tautology than an assumption.
Not exactly, PJ. Just taking some action which makes you feel better is not really what 'placebo' has come to mean. It means being prescribed some medical treatment (such as a medicine, diet, massage, etc) which is supposed to treat the medical condition you are suffering from. But really it is a sham - the treatment does not have any physical effects, so if you actually feel better (as people very often do) the effects are all in your mind or just coincidental. The placebo effect is so strong and so universal that whenever a new drug is tried out, it always seems to work - so new drugs always have to be tested in comparison with placebos (i.e. no active ingredients) to find out if the new drug really works or not. Homeopathic treatments can hardly be tested against placebos, obviously, because they are placebos.
Now try this for size. I started off striking a stark contrast between "truth" and "lies". Perhaps the real world is not so black and white. Many things are said which are based on works of fiction, dreams, faith, misunderstandings, or ignorance, with the result that they are not strictly true. But "lies" has an adverse connotation - it has come to mean not merely false but harmful, deliberately misleading, and self-serving. People tell lies to conceal their wrongdoing, to gain unfair advantage, or to spare their embarrassment; and they forfeit their credibility and the trust of others. Not every actor or writer of fiction can be called a liar, only those who pretend to be speaking/writing the truth. In the examples in post #1, things were said which were not strictly true but were intended to benefit the listener (and do no harm). So was I wrong to call them lies? And how can we tell the difference?
I'm puzzled and excuse my ignorance, but I can't see that the nursing people would have told him he was taking placebos......I thought the whole 'trick' of the placebo thing is that the patient doesn't know what he is taking...... .......oh well.....back to skool, AL.
Perhaps I am confusing things a little, he was given treatment that included a placebos but wasn't shure if he was on it to start with, should have been chemo but as he had no side effects at all he delved further to find he was the one on the placebos.
Gotcha...........fancy the tw*ts giving a cancer sufferer placebos.......they would have done better getting a healer in. AL
The way I see it, placebos are a useful tool for the 'patient'; if they don't work the 'doctor' can simply say they weren't strong enough and try something else. The problem comes when the 'doctor' starts believing them, to the exclusion of other true medicines, or to the detriment to the 'patient'.
