What Placebos Teach Us about Health and Care: A Philosopher Pops a Pill [Hardcover]

This Element enables readers to rethink the nature of research, clinical care, and the boundaries of medicine.This Element provides an overview of the different roles of placebos and a survey of significant studies, critically examines the concept of placebo offering a new definition that avoids the pitfalls of other attempts and highlights some impending challenges for placebo studies.This Element provides an overview of the different roles of placebos and a survey of significant studies, critically examines the concept of placebo offering a new definition that avoids the pitfalls of other attempts and highlights some impending challenges for placebo studies.Placebo effects raise some fundamental questions concerning the nature of clinical and medical research. This Element begins with an overview of the different roles placebos play, followed by a survey of significant studies and dominant views about placebo mechanisms. It then critically examines the concept of placebo and offers a new definition that avoids the pitfalls of other attempts. The main philosophical lesson is that background medical theories provide the ontology for clinical and medical research. Because these theories often contain incoherent and arbitrary classifications, the concept of placebo inherits the same messiness. The Element concludes by highlighting some impending challenges for placebo studies.Introduction; 1. History and conceptual landscape; 2. A survey of Placebo studies; 3. Mechanisms of Placebo effects; 4. Philosophical implications of Placebos: from the elusiveness of Placebos to the challenge of authenticity; 5. The near future of Placebo research; References.As knowledge of placebo effects increases, Hos timely new [Element] has given us just what the doctor ordered:?an insightful and graceful review of clinical and mechanistic research concerning placebo in the context a broad philosophical perspective that is enlightening.?For anyone interested in placebo this volume is a cl5