Seeking nursery school teachers like Barbara One of my earliest memories is of a wonderful nursery teacher called Barbara. I was an energetic and curious kid, and I needed boundaries and stimulation. She taught me how to play checkers, scolded […]
I received a lot of questions from people who watched the BBC Horizon documentary about placebos and back pain. Some even asked: ‘Where can I get those placebos I saw on TV?’ The placebos we used in the documentary aren’t […]
A review of 28 trials published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine last week quantifies what many doctors already knew: empathic, positive communication benefits patients. Two true stories motivated me to do the review. Archie Cochrane reports […]
Trials show that drugs called ‘interferon alpha’ extend life in people with advanced skin cancer (by a bit). If we invented a new drug to treat advanced skin cancer, most patients would want to know whether the new drug was […]
I saved the money for the NHS because I live in the UK, but I would have saved the money for whoever was footing my health bills in any country. If I lived somewhere where I paid my own […]
You can teach an old dog new tricks, and this old dog wants to learn – Thomas P. O’Neill In February 1983, my grandmother had a stroke that paralysed the right side of her body. The doctors, physiotherapists and family […]
Professor George Lewith* was a doctor who was famous for being kind and optimistic with his patients. In the early 1980s Lewith’s colleague Bruce Thomas said positivity might give patients a good feeling but it didn’t have any health benefits. […]
Lying to patients is almost always unethical. But, in order for placebos to work, we have to believe they are “real” treatments, which means the doctor would have to lie to us and say that the placebo was actually a […]
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My brother in law chain smoked for 20 years. He tried to quit with cognitive behavior therapy, nicotine replacement therapy, and other therapies but nothing worked. Then he suddenly stopped. Surprised, I asked how. He showed me some pills with […]