Well.... how??
2006-11-19 05:57:31 · 6 answers · asked by Jim H 1 in Health ➔ Other - Health
Not "how to test WITH placebos". If a placebo is a substance with no effect, how can you be sure it has no effect? Merely saying "it does nothing" isn't enough, for scientific doctrine it has to be proven under controlled conditions. After all, eat a lot of sugar and see what happens, it has an effect!!! (and is bad for your teeth). Should I have put this in Philosophy?
2006-11-19 06:37:06 · update #1
You don't have to test something that you know is definitely not going to work. Placebos are starch or sugar pills.
Placebos are given to test patients to measure whether if the real drug is curing the patient psychologically or therapeuticaly.
For Eg. They will give real Viagra for 7 days and ask them about erections.
Next week they will give sugar pills(placebo) and ask the same. If the test patient does get erections from sugar pills then they are mentally triggered for an erection its not a therapeutic response of Viagra.
Got it??
2006-11-19 06:06:05 · answer #1 · answered by Curious 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They use "double blind" studies. The doctors give out pills to people with specific illnesses and the pills are either the real pill or a placebos. The doctor is not told which pills are real and which ones are not. Neither is the patient. The patient is asked to report the changes in the symptoms of the illness or condition. The investigator, who is not the doctor handing out the pills, knows which patients recieved the real pill and which ones recieved the placebo. That information is put together with the changes in symptoms.
That is how placebos are used to test other drugs. Placebos are usually sugar pills, they have been tested on animals and humans and have provided no effect on either subjects.
2006-11-19 06:06:37 · answer #2 · answered by Gypsy Girl 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well, when they have a new drug they want to test they get a big group of volunteers. Then they divide the people into 2 groups. One of the groups gets the drug they are testing, the other group gets the placebo. They don't tell the group with the placebo that they are taking it. They tell them all they are taking the new drug and give them all the same instructions. They don't actually "test" placebos. They are just given to the control group in the experiment.
2006-11-19 06:01:23 · answer #3 · answered by Lippy 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I dont think its the placebos that are actually tested, its the drug that is tested and generally use placebos to see what happen or if the drug is actually affected. I think anything can be a placebo as long as the person thinks, feels or is getting better
2006-11-19 06:05:58 · answer #4 · answered by BigEasy 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
with the help of something called a focus group.
2006-11-19 06:08:18 · answer #5 · answered by Digi 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
they don't. These are substances without true therapeutic effects.
2006-11-19 05:59:24 · answer #6 · answered by ? 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋