Placebo Summary

English summary: placebo, cracking the code

This summary is covering the documentary Placebo: cracking the code, this documentary is about five scientists, who want to know more about placebo. These scientists search through different cases where placebo has taken place, they do not just cover different cases where it worked but also cases where it did not work, and why it did not work.

This documentary is divided in four parts, each part tells about a case or a happening, in which placebo is mentioned. Case one is about knee operations; it tells the story of how one surgeon, wanting to see if two different surgery methods had different outcomes, was told by a colleague, that he would have to include placebo surgery, if the experiment were

Because of how well it worked; she did not believe the doctors when they told her that she was on placebo drugs. The doctors were scanning her brain to keep trace of how the placebo drugs would work, and it showed an increase in the frontal brain. This is the center of emotions.

Another success story is about a doctor, who tried to hypnotize a patient in order to heal him of warts, it was kind of an challenge between him and another doctor, so when he succeeded he went and bragged about, the other doctor just looked baffled, and said it was not warts but another incurable disease. He tried to cure several other patients but it never worked. The doctor himself believes it was because he knew it was incurable then.

In addition the documentary also mentions a lady, with hips so deform, that she is not able to walk, she is a devout catholic and therefore she travels to Lourdes, on pilgrimage to be healed, this unfortunately does not work, but there has been cases where people where cured in Lourdes, this accompanies the theory that it is only one third of people who responds positively to