At 09:31 AM 1/3/97 -0500, you wrote:
>To: Charles Meyer, PWP with MD
>From: George Andes, PWP without MD
>
>Your posting about FTS was right on the money. The value of strict double
blind
>experiments is hard for many of us laymen to come to grips with. The placebo
>effect is not obvious to the subject who has been given the sugar pill instead
>of the real stuff; neither is the examiner who knows who is taking the sugar
>pill and who is taking the real stuff aware of the extent of the unconscious
>bias present in his observations. Only "self-imposed blindness" can create the
>objectivity necessary to get useful results.
>
>When I say this, I am really talking to myself. I am a candidate for FTS
>waiting eagerly and in terror for the call summoning me to have a hole drilled
>in my skull and a needle inserted in my brain by a person I have never met, and
>at that with the full understanding that there is a one in three chance that my
>barely suppressed instinct to run away as fast as I can may be wasted
effort, an
>effort expended for a mock ceremony, a placebo operation.
>
George,
The idea of being the one to get the placebo isn't all bad. You get the best
of medical care. I'm in several studies [not transplant] and get medical
care far beyond that received by the average patient. You also get the
advantage of not being at risk in a risky operation..Bad DNA in donor
tissue..error in harvesting tissue and you grow a foot or an extra ear
where you should just havebrain tissue.. As a placebo recipient you get to
see what happens to others.. The medical community gets smarter and more
skilled, and you can get a real one done later [generally for free] IF YOU
STILL WANT IT. Waiting to seewhat happens to others has advantages..even if
you get an extra hole in the head.
Will
WILL JOHNSTON 4049 OAKLAND SCHOOL ROAD
SALISBURY, MD 21804-2716
410-543-0110
Pres A.P.D.A. DelMarVa Chapter
