A mere "symbol" of medicine--the sugar pill, saline injection,
doctor in a white lab coat--the placebo nonetheless sometimes
produces "real" results. Medical science has largely managed its
discomfort with this phenomenon by discounting the placebo effect,
subtracting it as an impurity in its data through double-blind
tests of new treatments and drugs. This book is committed to a
different perspective--namely, that the placebo effect is a "real"
entity in its own right, one that has much to teach us about how
symbols, settings, and human relationships literally get under our
skin.
Anne Harrington's introduction and a historical overview by
Elaine Shapiro and the late Arthur Shapiro, which open the book,
review the place of placebos in the history of medicine,
investigate the current surge in interest in them, and probe the
methodological difficulties of saying scientifically just what
placebos can and cannot do. Combining individual essays with a
dialogue among writers from fields as far-flung as cultural
anthropology and religion, pharmacology and molecular biology, the
book aims to expand our ideas about what the placebo effect is and
how it should be seen and studied. At the same time, the book uses
the challenges and questions raised by placebo phenomena to
initiate a broader interdisciplinary discussion about our nature as
cultural animals: animals with minds, brains, and bodies that
somehow manage to integrate "biology" and "culture," "mechanism"
and "meaning," into a seamless whole.
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