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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
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| Nocebo | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:31:12.972595+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Ambiguity of medical usage == Stewart-Williams and Podd argue that using the contrasting terms "placebo" and "nocebo" for inert agents that produce pleasant, health-improving, or desirable outcomes and unpleasant, health-diminishing, or undesirable outcomes (respectively) is extremely counterproductive. For example, precisely the same inert agents can produce analgesia and hyperalgesia, the first of which, on this definition, would be a placebo, and the second a nocebo. A second problem is that the same effect, such as immunosuppression, may be desirable for a subject with an autoimmune disorder, but undesirable for most other subjects. Thus, in the first case, the effect would be a placebo, and in the second a nocebo. A third problem is that the prescriber does not know whether the relevant subjects consider the effects they experience desirable or undesirable until some time after the drugs have been administered. A fourth is that the same phenomena are generated in all the subjects, and generated by the same drug, which is acting in all of the subjects through the same mechanism. Yet because the phenomena in question have been subjectively considered desirable to one group but not the other, the phenomena are now being labeled in two mutually exclusive ways (i.e., placebo and nocebo), giving the false impression that the drug in question has produced two different phenomena.
== Ambiguity of anthropological usage == Some people maintain that belief can kill (e.g., voodoo death: Cannon in 1942 describes a number of instances from a variety of different cultures) and or heal (e.g., faith healing). A self-willed death (due to voodoo hex, evil eye, pointing the bone procedure, etc.) is an extreme form of a culture-specific syndrome or mass psychogenic illness that produces a particular form of psychosomatic or psychophysiological disorder resulting in psychogenic death. Rubel in 1964 spoke of "culture-bound" syndromes, those "from which members of a particular group claim to suffer and for which their culture provides an etiology, diagnosis, preventive measures, and regimens of healing". Certain anthropologists, such as Robert Hahn and Arthur Kleinman, have extended the placebo/nocebo distinction into this realm to allow a distinction to be made between rituals, such as faith healing, performed to heal, cure, or bring benefit (placebo rituals) and others, such as "pointing the bone", performed to kill, injure or bring harm (nocebo rituals). As the meaning of the two interrelated and opposing terms has extended, we now find anthropologists speaking, in various contexts, of nocebo or placebo (harmful or helpful) rituals:
that might entail nocebo or placebo (unpleasant or pleasant) procedures; about which subjects might have nocebo or placebo (harmful or beneficial) beliefs; that are delivered by operators that might have nocebo or placebo (pathogenic, disease-generating or salutogenic, health-promoting) expectations; that are delivered to subjects that might have nocebo or placebo (negative, fearful, despairing or positive, hopeful, confident) expectations about the ritual; that are delivered by operators who might have nocebo or placebo (malevolent or benevolent) intentions, in the hope that the rituals will generate nocebo or placebo (lethal, injurious, harmful or restorative, curative, healthy) outcomes; and, that all of this depends upon the operator's overall beliefs in the nocebo ritual's harmful nature or the placebo ritual's beneficial nature. Yet it may become even more terminologically complex, for as Hahn and Kleinman indicate, there can also be cases of paradoxical nocebo outcomes from placebo rituals and placebo outcomes from nocebo rituals (see also unintended consequences). In 1973, writing from his extensive experience of treating cancer (including more than 1,000 melanoma cases) at Sydney Hospital, Milton warned of the impact of the delivery of a prognosis, and how many of his patients, upon receiving their prognosis, gave up hope and died a premature death: "there is a small group of patients in whom the realization of impending death is a blow so terrible that they are quite unable to adjust to it, and they die rapidly before the malignancy seems to have developed enough to cause death. This problem of self-willed death is in some ways analogous to the death produced in primitive peoples by witchcraft ('pointing the bone')".
== Ethics == Some researchers have pointed out that the harm caused by communicating with patients about potential treatment adverse events raises an ethical issue. To respect their autonomy, one must inform a patient about harms a treatment may cause. Yet the way in which potential harms are communicated could cause additional harm, which may violate the ethical principle of non-maleficence. It is possible that nocebo effects can be reduced while respecting autonomy using different models of informed consent, including the use of a framing effect and the authorized concealment.
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Nocebo and nocebo effect The nocebo response The Nocebo Effect: Placebo's Evil Twin What modifies a healing response The science of voodoo: When mind attacks body, New Scientist The Effect of Treatment Expectation on Drug Efficacy: Imaging the Analgesic Benefit of the Opioid Remifentanil This Video Will Hurt (The Nocebo Effect), via YouTube BBC Discovery program on the nocebo effect What is the Nocebo effect?