Informative Essay: The Placebo Effect

The placebo effect has been affecting people for hundreds of years. In the 1940s sugar pills were sold in doctors’ catalogs specifically for the purpose of prescribing them to psychiatric patients. Today, over 60% of doctors admit to prescribing placebos to their patients, although there is an unwritten rule among doctors in the United States that placebos should no longer be given to patients. Some even do it on a regular basis because they believe the effect a fake drug has on the brain is more effective for its price than the real medication or treatment. In the documentary, Placebo: Cracking the Code, viewers see a few different perspective of the placebo effect. They hear from doctors, patients, and researchers to more fully understand the ins and outs of the placebo effect. These different viewpoints serve as an effective way to bring light the producers’ purpose: to show just helpful and sometimes harmful placebo drugs can be.

“Over 127,000 United States citizens were imprisoned during World War II. Their crime? Being of Japanese ancestry”(History par.1) all because people were scared which is a form of mass hysteria. Mass Hysteria is the cause of many panics across the world such as in Le Roy High School in New York where multiple girls suffered a twitch disorder much like tourettes and then in Tanzania when villages west of Lake Victoria experienced an epidemic of laughing and crying. Similar outbreaks have been reported in schools in europe and the US”(Waller par. 2). Most cases of mass hysteria all have different causes and there are three which are most common. Throughout history, mass hysteria has been caused by fear, attention and rumors, and even a psychic contagion.

Cheerleading began for me at the age of twelve. In the past I had played soccer, basketball, softball, did ballet. Basically every activity my mom could possibly put me in. All of those activities were okay, but cheerleading became something that was special to me. I first began cheering in middle school for the Hazelwood West Junior Wildcats. I cheered on the team throughout middle school literally dedicating all of my free time to cheerleading. I lived, ate, and dreamed cheer. I went on to continue cheering throughout my high school career, cheering for all Hazelwood West athletics, including: soccer, football, basketball, and wrestling. I was a hardcore dedicated athlete, and I had spirit like no other. From

Placebos have been used in clinical trials since the eighteenth century but did not become a research topic until the late twentieth century (van Haselen, 2013). Most often when using placebos in clinical trials it is to determine whether or not the active agent has more effect on a patient than the placebo by providing each to the same number of recipients. The trials are almost always double blinded, this means that both person giving the drug and the person receiving it are unaware whether or not it is active so that good care and relationships must be present in the recipients at all times (Tavel, 2014). Ovosi, Ibrahim, & Bello-Ovosi (2017) declared “The choice between placebo and active controls in clinical trials affects the quality of the result as well as the ethical and scientific acceptability by both the public and regulatory bodies. It has, therefore, continued to generate discuss among researchers” (para. 3). This goes against the autonomy of a patient which is the right for a person to

Today there are still many cases of mass hysteria heard around the world. The article, "What happened to the Girls in Le Roy" announced that Katie Krautwursts "... chin was jutting forward uncontrollably and her face was contracting into spasms" (Dominus). This happened all when she woke up from a nap. Weeks later her best friend woke up from a nap and the same thing was occurring. This is what seems to be the start of the spread. Many of these symptoms were "stress related" according to a neurologist in Buffalo "...and because so many students were afflicted with similar symptoms, it was also considered to be mass psychogenic illness." This to many parents was disheartening and even insulting. As months went on they had tried thing after thing to try and solve the problem but new questions kept appearing.

The professor Calderhead advised the class to write an outline to clarify the ideas properly in order to write a detailed and informative research paper. I think in this way I can have a big picture of what to write about. According to my outline, the first sub-topic connected to my research on “Have government actions made New York City safer after 9/11” is related to terrorism.

Unlike its sister energy supply, fossil fuels, wind power is a clean resource. Wind turbines don’t pollute the air like power plants, which rely on the burning of coal or natural gas. They’re free from producing atmospheric emissions that cause acid rain or greenhouse gases.

The author continues to demonstrate how the placebo effect works by comparing it to the famous biological study by Ivan Pavlov. In Pavlov’s experiment, dogs are conditioned to respond to a specific stimulus and eventually begin to respond to the same stimulus in the same way all the time. Bjerklie explains that, “as far as the placebo effect is concerned, we may as well be those impressionable canines.” What Bjerklie means is that the human mind has the ability to be conditioned to expect certain outcomes. The placebo effect builds on the human minds ability to be conditioned and an individual’s faith in the healthcare providers it choses to visit. Overtime the human mind has come to believe that if given a medication that is suppose to have a positive effect on a specific pathology, it will in fact have an positive effect.

It can be hard to except that the mind has the ability to create such real symptoms. After all, when people face uncertainty they want an explanation (Small, n.d.). When there’s no physical reason for their symptoms, they feel as if they have no control, leading to their fear escalating (Small, n.d.). This combined with a group mentality, may cause the symptoms to spread rapidly and cause many to become influenced, resulting in an epidemic. As one saw in the case of the girls from Le Roy High School, anyone is vulnerable to mass hysteria for “ [it] can strike anywhere, anytime” (Small,

Medical treatments happen around the world in many different countries. This can be for illnesses such as cancer or influenza. There are other medical treatments, too. A placebo is a medical treatment that is ineffective. It is ineffective because the treatment that they’re given is completely false. Those personnel that prescribe drugs (doctors, psychiatrists, etc.) give placebo medical treatments to those whose

Nootropics are also known as smart drugs although this term refers to any substance, drug, supplement or functional food that can improve the functions and capabilities of our brain , such as attention, memory, intelligence, creativity or motivation. It is a booster of vast intellectual capacity for numerous people . Nootropics offer the energy you want to charge your mental energy. It helps in improving the sharpness of the brain and provides you quality to think deeper and faster.

Another idea is that it is the placebo effect, a procedure or medication that has a psychological effect on the brain but not a physiological effect on the brain. It’s like giving someone a drink of water but saying it makes pain go away, and magically their pain goes away. (Science Based Medicine)

Nootropics are often referred to as cognitive enhancers, brain pills or smart drugs. They are designed to help improve cognitive function in healthy individuals. They can also enhance memory, creativity and motivation.

“A wind turbine is a machine for converting the kinetic energy in wind into mechanical energy”. (1) The inventor of the first electric wind turbine was Clevelander Charles Brush, who ran his entire Euclid Avenue mansion off of one for 20 years, which later made the cover of Scientific American in 1888. (2) Although the use of alternate energy didn't rise a great deal afterward, this event did open the eyes for many environmentalists. Wind power is only one of our several “energy source[s] whose ‘fuel’ is free and will never be exhausted” (3) with the pros and cons not completely weighed out as to whether it will be truly beneficial or not. The two main issues regarding wind turbines are the environmental effects that they have and the

Article: Sue Wright, 2005, Wind power – what you need to know, viewed on August 15, 2011, retrieved from: www.environmentaction.org.au