In the space of 3 days I have read two books citing this experiment and it
is baffling. Please don't try and wash it away with a rationalisation of the
dumbass kind, it is very obvious to any honest clinician that a person's
attitude can have a profound effect on disease progression. Nor is this
spooky, the problem can be couched within a neuro-endocrine-immunological
axis of understanding; though I admit that paradigm certainly cannot explain
all that comes under the umbrella of the placebo effect. So it still might
be spooky ...
In this experiment the Bob Ader and Nick Cohen decided to see if the immune
system could be trained to respond to a conditioned stimulus. The paired the
sweet taste of saccharine wtih an anticancer drug that suppresses immune
immune function, cyclophosphamide. They fed the drug and the saccharine to
the rats over and over again. Each time the immunosuppressive drug was given
the immune cell count went down. Then they took away the drug and just gave
the saccharine alone. The immune cell count fell again. Before the
conditioning process the saccharine had no impact on immune cell count.
I cannot find a way to understand this. Yes the brain and immune systems do
influence each other great deal but nothing in our current understanding can
explain this.
Now if the placebo effect is about suggestion then these are very clever
rats. You might want to look up the Norman Cousins and Henry Beecher. Then
you'll really get confused. (Those two instances I can offer a plausible
explanation but this one has me stumped.)Why the placebo effect is ignored
is beyond me. I suspect it simply doesn't fit into our current understanding
so people wash it away with some dumbass explanation. This is what happened
to Ader and Cohen, initially their results were treated with derision. If
anyone knows if someone has come up with an explanation for this effect I
sure would like to hear it.
John.