In medicine, an inert substance (such as sugar) used in place of an active drug is known as a placebo. The word is a Latin term meaning “I will please.” An active or impure placebo is one that contains some medicinal ingredients, but these ingredients have properties unrelated to the patient’s condition and should have no effect on it. Placebos are used in several ways: to satisfy some patients’ desire for drug therapy, in incurable cases or cases for which there is no known treatment, and in controlled studies to help test the effectiveness of new drugs.
A placebo has no medicinal effect on a patient’s condition, yet, in some cases, it can relieve and even cure symptoms. Allergies and tension headaches, for example, may be cleared up when the sufferers are given pills that they believe contain medication for their ailments. Even in cases where patients have incurable illnesses, administering a placebo often will bring about a temporary improvement in the patient.
This so-called placebo effect has been a well-known phenomenon in medical practice for some time, but how and why placebos work remains a mystery. Physicians have observed that the strength of a patient’s faith in the placebo is a critical element in its effectiveness. That is, the more a patient believes the placebo will work, the more effect it seems to have. One theory suggests that this act of faith in some way releases brain chemicals called endorphins, which are the body’s natural opiates.
In testing new drugs, placebos are used in blind and double-blind tests to avoid bias. In blind tests, patients do not know if they are being given the active drug or a placebo by physicians. In a double-blind test neither the patients nor the physicians know until the test is complete which is the real drug and which is the placebo. (See also therapy.)