Quack cures that work!

WHEN scientists test a new medicine, they usually compare it with a placebo — something they know doesn’t have any medical effects, such as a sugar pill — to prove that it is really working.

This is because people often feel better when they take a pill — any pill, even a sham one. This is known as the ‘placebo effect’ and doctors often discourage their use.

But rather than dismissing something as ‘just a placebo’, the effect always fills me with wonder. To me, it is testament to the astonishing power of the mind.

A study this week showed the ‘ placebo effect’ is even more powerful than we thought. Researchers found placebos work even when people know the medication they are taking isn’t real.

During tests, when fake medications were given to patients suffering with back pain, their symptoms improved by 30 per cent — whether they knew it was a sham or not. Amazing!

I, myself, use placebos. Of course, countless in- depth studies have found homeopathy to be bunkum and that the only benefit comes from the ‘placebo effect’. But I am still a fan.

For a long time, whenever I did live television, I would take a homeopathic remedy that was supposed to be ‘calming’. I knew it didn’t really do anything, but I still felt that it did — and surely that’s all that matters?

Just before the lights in the studio went up, I’d take one and it would help me to relax and enjoy the experience. It doesn’t have any side-effects and there’s no risk of addiction. Where’s the harm?

One day, I realised half way through filming that I’d forgotten to take it, and yet I was totally calm. I didn’t need them again.

It’s not just mental aspects such as pain or nervousness that the ‘placebo effect’ can help with. In extraordinary studies in the Fifties (they’d never be allowed these days), ‘fake’ operations — in which surgeons cut open patients, but didn’t actually do anything — were performed on people with angina.

Meanwhile, other patients suffering the same problem underwent genuine operations.

The former did just as well as those who had proper treatment.

For ethical reasons, placebos are not allowed to be prescribed, but I think the medical profession is missing a trick, especially if it doesn’t matter whether the person is aware the treatment they are being given is a placebo.

Alternative medicine is the closest we have to being able to knowingly give out placebos, and I’m all for it.