Sabemos que la industria farmaceutica e sun gran negocio, pero aun con sus laboratorios high tech, sus procedimientos crueles de experimentación en animales y todo el cobijo de la comunidad científica solo son resultados estadísticos los que determinan que tan factible es un medicamento para tratar un mal, no son resultados absoolutos de cura. Si ese mismo principio estadístico se traslada a otras formas de medicina llamadas alternativas (a la occidental científica) encontraremos también que las estadísticas pueden darnso resultados positivos, es decir en ambos casos las estadísticas demuestran que las estadísticas no demuestran nada.
Este tema lo incluyo aquí por primera ocasión pero no e sla primera vez que surge, hace algun tiempo, un par de años tal vez a lo mucho apareció en la revista Businessweek un artículo de portada señalando justamente como la ciencia médica era bastante azarosa y muy graficamente ponia en una ruleta los diferentes tipos de medicina, implicando que hay mucho por aprender y ubicaba al mismo nivel en la ruleta a la ciencia médica occidental que a la homeopatia, el yoga, el reiki, le herbolaria, etc.
Ahora con este nuevo reporte de como el 50% de las veces los doctores "científicos" en EUA, Israel, Dinamarca, Gran Bretaña y otros países solo recetan placebos a sus clientes es más claro, para mí al menos, que definitivamente muchas enfermedades no son más que necesidd de atención, contacto y cariño humano. Un placebo no cura, cura la mente de quien lo ingiere, es de algun modo un poder transferido, me pregunto si será similar el principio de la fé, pero eso es otro tema.
Les dejo aquí algunos los textos y enlaces de la nota, no sin antes comentar que también algunos somos de la idea que ir al doctor aveces lejos de curar lo hace sentir enfermo a uno, pero un chequeo rutinario y vida y dieta sana por sobre todo nunca está de más.
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: October 23, 2008
Half
of all American doctors responding to a nationwide survey say they regularly
prescribe placebos to patients. The results trouble medical ethicists, who say
more research is needed to determine whether doctors must deceive patients in
order for placebos to work.
The study involved 679 internists and
rheumatologists chosen randomly from a national list of such doctors. In
response to three questions included as part of the larger survey, about half
reported recommending placebos regularly. Surveys in Denmark, Israel, Britain,
Sweden and New Zealand have found similar results.
The most common
placebos the American doctors reported using were headache pills and vitamins,
but a significant number also reported prescribing antibiotics and sedatives.
Although these drugs, contrary to the usual definition of placebos, are not
inert, doctors reported using them for their effect on patients’ psyches, not
their bodies.
In most cases, doctors who recommended placebos described
them to patients as “a medicine not typically used for your condition but might
benefit you,” the survey found. Only 5 percent described the treatment to
patients as “a placebo.”
The study is being published in BMJ, formerly
The British Medical Journal. One of the authors, Franklin G. Miller, was among
the medical ethicists who said they were troubled by the results.
“This
is the doctor-patient relationship, and our expectations about being truthful
about what’s going on and about getting informed consent should give us pause
about deception,” said Dr. Miller, director of the research ethics program in
the department of bioethics at the National Institutes of Health.
Dr.
William Schreiber, an internist in Louisville, Ky., at first said in an
interview that he did not believe the survey’s results, because, he said, few
doctors he knows routinely prescribe placebos.
But when asked how he
treated fibromyalgia or other conditions that many doctors suspect are largely
psychosomatic, Dr. Schreiber changed his mind. “The problem is that most of
those people are very difficult patients, and it’s a whole lot easier to give
them something like a big dose of Aleve,” he said. “Is that a placebo treatment?
Depending on how you define it, I guess it is.”
But antibiotics and
sedatives are not placebos, he said.
The American Medical Association
discourages the use of placebos by doctors when represented as helpful.
“In the clinical setting, the use of a placebo without the patient’s
knowledge may undermine trust, compromise the patient-physician relationship and
result in medical harm to the patient,” the group’s policy states.
Controlled clinical trials have hinted that placebos may have powerful
effects. Some 30 percent to 40 percent of depressed patients who are given
placebos get better, a treatment effect that antidepressants barely top.
Placebos have also proved effective against hypertension and pain.
But
despite much attention given to the power of placebos, basic questions about
them remain unanswered: Are they any better than no treatment at all? Must
people be deceived into believing that a treatment is active for a placebo to
work?
Some studies have hinted at answers, but experts say far more work
is needed.
Dr. Howard Brody, director of the Institute for the Medical
Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston, said the
popularity of alternative medical treatments had led many doctors to embrace
placebos as a potentially useful tool. But, Dr. Brody said, doctors should
resist using placebos, because they reinforce the deleterious notion that “when
something is the matter with you, you will not get better unless you swallow
pills.”
Earlier this year, a Maryland mother announced that she would
start selling dextrose tablets as a children’s placebo called Obecalp, for
“placebo” spelled backward.
Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, one of the study’s
authors, said doctors should not prescribe antibiotics or sedatives as placebos,
given those drugs’ risks. Use of less active placebos is understandable, he
said, since risks are low.
“Everyone comes out happy: the doctor is
happy, the patient is happy,” said Dr. Emanuel, chairman of the bioethics
department at the health institutes. “But ethical challenges remain.”
