As much as people dispute, the placebo isn’t a replacement for medicine. It is still a lookalike false treatment even if it can produce the same results as actual medicine. Moreover, what is called a ‘placebo effect’ may have an explanation, one that certainly isn’t real treatment. Like any other power, the placebo effect also has its limits, as well as its possible reverse effect. Steven Novella (2010), an assistant professor of neurology in Yale University, describes the placebo effect as the result of the circumstances of the disease, bias, physiological effects, or the desire for success (Placebo Effects, para. 1-4). The circumstances of the condition are completely independent from human interference or bias. Some diseases exist in phases. These phases can be described as the high and low points of discomfort. What is sometimes considered a placebo effect is just the condition entering its milder phase. It isn’t even a cure; it’s only chance. The other three classifications all involve human interference. All three of them can vary in …show more content…
Named for meaning ‘I will harm’ in Latin, the nocebo effect does the exact opposite of the placebo effect. It is an inert treatment that, instead of placating a person, does harm to them. It is equally as powerful as a placebo, even powerful enough to cancel out a real treatment in favor of a negative one. An experiment conducted on asthmatics shows this ability. One group of patients was given bronchoconstrictor (worsens asthma) but told it was bronchodilator (aids asthma), while the other group was given and told the other way around. In both cases, 50% of the subjects experienced the opposite effect of the actual substance (Harvard Medical School, 2005, para. 4). The placebo effect counteracted the bronchoconstrictor and the nocebo effect reversed the