placebos

One of the books I've been reading lately made a good point: if there is such a thing as a 'placebo effect,' then why isn't more research being put into it? I'm not thinking so much about 'sugar pills' per se, but what is going on mentally that is causing the benefits. If the mind alone is capable of bringing about healing, isn't that what we all want?

Of course, it's easy to see why the pharmaceutical companies aren't putting anything into studying the efficacy of placebos, after all, their billions of dollars are made from the sale of their drugs. But for the people that have come to rely upon taking those drugs, there is the expense, the possible side effects, perhaps more drugs to deal with those side effects, more side effects from those drugs, and so on. I'm not against drugs, but the reliance on them, and the lack of attention given to other alternatives. After all, I have my prescriptions too.

My point is, let's not look at the power of the mind to heal as just some sort of quackery to be discarded by 'serious' science. If as much effort was put into the power of the mind to heal as has been put into chemical studies over the last, say, 50 years, where would we be? I've grown up with the idea of looking at native American medicine men and women as being just so much pomp and circumstance, but I can hardly believe that they wouldn't have been such a significant part of those cultures if they weren't effective. There's an old adage about how we're only using 10% of our brains - I think what's being referred to is the capacity of more than our ability to learn facts, figures, and how to solve equations, but rather our ability to use our imaginations and our beliefs.