What is the “placebo effect” in clinical trials? First of all, you should understand what a placebo is. A placebo in a clinical trial is a sugar pill that is given randomly to various study participants who do not know whether they are receiving the placebo or the experimental drug. In most cases, the study doctor and research staff also do not know which participants are receiving the placebo and which are receiving the actual study drug. Throughout the course of the clinical trial, the study participant’s condition is documented and analyzed, and the results of those who received the placebo and those who took the study drug are finally compared.
The “placebo effect” is the term that refers to situations in which study participants who received the sugar pill actually demonstrated an improvement in their condition! How can this be? These videos below will shed some light on this interesting topic, but the bottom line is that placebo effects are real, and do occur in roughly 30% of cases. Drug companies go to great lengths, and spend a lot of money training researchers on how to identify and perhaps even eliminate placebo effects in clinical trials in order to get a better understanding of whether the study drug actually works.

I was eavesdropping in on a conversation between psychiatrist Dr Edrozo and my fellow guru Don Walters. They’re talking about the placebo effect in clinical trials. The main video is psychiatrist Dr Sfera talking about the placebo effect.


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