The War on Placebo-Based Medicine Continues

The pro-medicine advocates are all riding on their high-horses over a new study or something in the New England Journal of Medicine that makes the ridiculously unfounded claim that placebos don't work.

Which is, of course, complete hogwash. Hogwash! Placebos DO work, and they're getting stronger at curing diseases.

Well, maybe not curing diseases, per se, but making people feel like their diseases are cured, which for all intents and purposes is the same thing.

The pro-mediciners like notorious anti-quack David Gorski want you to believe that self-delusion is ineffective at curing disease, and are waving around this new "study" as "proof". However, they literally shoot themselves in the foot (gunshot wounds to the foot, by the by, are a malady one can easily treat at home with a mixture of witch hazel and hubris) with the results of the study.

Observe! The graph on the right shows the results of the study, which pitted an albuterol inhaler against a placebo inhaler, fake acupuncture, and no treatment at all for patients with moderate asthma. Now it's true that the albuterol increased lung volume by more than (forgive me, but I have to use an evil number here) 20%.

But! The graph also shows that the placebo inhaler, fake acupuncture, and nothing at all also improved lung volume by more than 7%! Not as effective as albuterol, sure, but still effectivish!

This is nothing less than a revolution in curology!!

If placebos and no treatment can cure asthma by 7%, imagine all the other diseases we could make 7% better by pretending to poke people with needles or telling them to just get over it! Cancer, AIDS, lumbago, bromhidrosis, the list is endless! But I doubt you'll hear that from the evidence-based medicinists!

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