Book Description
True Tales of the ridiculous, the silly, and the just plain weird cases doctors face—lampooning the medical bureaucracy that makes practicing medicine and getting medical care such a headache.
Doctors have a sick sense of humor. This is the deep, dark, and hilarious secret of the medical profession revealed by the irreverent Dr. Douglas Farrago in his popular satirical magazine, Placebo Journal—affectionately known by its thousands of fanatic readers as “Mad magazine for doctors” and called, by U.S. News.com, “raunchy, adolescent, and very funny.” Now, in The Placebo Chronicles, Dr. Farrago has compiled the best of the most outrageous and uproarious true stories to come out of the ERs and examination rooms of doctors all over the country.
Submitted by actual physicians, these are the stories they tell each other at cocktail parties and in doctors’ lounges, trading sidesplitting and truly unusual tales of their most embarrassing medical moments, the grossest things they’ve ever seen in medicine, their favorite Munchausen patients, and much more, including “The X-Ray Files”—mind-boggling anecdotes and images of the oddest foreign objects doctors have removed from patients. Not for the faint of heart, the humor in The Placebo Chronicles is brutally funny—just what the doctor ordered to guard against the ill effects of an M.D.’s worst enemies: the Medical Axis of Evil, a.k.a. drug companies, HMOs, and malpractice insurers.
Fully illustrated with fake advertisements—for pseudopharmaceuticals like OxyCotton Candy and Indifferex (the mediocre antidepressant)—this refreshingly honest collection invites doctors and patients alike to share the laughter, a liberal dose of the very best medicine.
Customer Reviews:
Are You a Doctor or a Patient?.......2007-07-30
I could see what was funny about this book and I appreciate the serious dedication required to get through the grind of schooling and to actually practice. I can even appreciate the contempt these practitioners must feel with patients that don't adhere to regimen, or narc seekers who think they are pulling the wool over the practitioner's eyes. These issues were presented in a very humerous fashion by the Doctors - often it is a hoot.
But it also made me sad because though things are better than they used to be, there is still a core problem with communication between doctors and patients. For various reasons, certain people get a certain kind of treatment and labels that others don't. There is a documented problem with gender, race, and class bias, and it doesn't take too much imagination to see that it might cut both ways. I could go on for a while about this subject but I won't - google it.
The contempt some of the doctors unload about their patients was for me a bit hurtful. I have often sat on the other side of a doctor's desk, not always the case but more often than not a person with a HUGE ego who is irritated at the prospect of having to explain what is wrong to the yokel patient. I have been treated like dirt, or a drug addict by MDs for perfectly legitimate and well documented problems. But judging from this book, I guess we are all a pain in the butt to these guys. They must be relieved that the healthcare crisis is keeping so many people out of their offices.
I liked the book but suggest another book, this time BASED ON THE PATIENT'S EXPERIENCES OF THE DOCTORS. Now this could be really really funny! With chapter headings like, "The Doctor Who Didn't Think I Knew He Was Manually Raping Me and Other Stories", and "How Can I Get This Doctor To Listen To Me Outside Of Batting Him On the Head?" or "I Told Him I Was Allergic To That Stuff". It could be really funny!
I took special note of the litigation issues these doctors express concern about. I've had at least three egregious, actionable, horrible snafus done to me by MDs over a period of about 25 years. I have NEVER taken any of these practitioners to court, even when I was urged to by other professionals. I imagine more people don't file than do, and the doctors should be more appreciative of that.
Read the book to find out about the other side; you've got to have compassion for them but keep a balanced view and look out for my new book, the companion volume, coming out soon.
Reality bites!.......2005-12-18
This book is the one you reach for after a long, hard day with whiny patients, screeching moms and parents who keep forgetting to give their epileptic kid his phenobarbital.
You need to put it all together and solve the mystery of how so many people make it from day to day with the worst habits and total inability to take care of themselves...
The irksome part of being a doctor is that you start out thinking it is all so noble and then you realize that in a room full of patients, staff and you, no one would ever agree with you.
Placebo Chronicles will radically revise your perspective as a health care provider and remind you how to get by from day to day! A great book for anyone who wants to know what real life in health care is like...Warning: you will never be able to watch any of those "dramedy" medical shows without snickering over their rank stupidity ever again, so read at your own risk!
mybookopinion MISSED THE POINT.......2005-09-29
As a st doc I can attest to the many stories in this book...in particular are the 2am ER narc seekers, heres a hint people, wether its in the ER at 2am or your FP at 10AM if you are a seeking narcotics everyone knows it, no one beleives how your rx was stolen, or how your toilet has passed so much codeine it should be given its own DEA number. Great read for those looking for some relief from the PC world we live in when you can be sued for telling a patient she is too fat and the once noble profession has been reduced to something akin to a walking lottery ticket, you can find refuge in the chronicles at least until that sheriff tracks you down with that subpoena.
To the reviewer with the 40 lb tumor heres a hint: the fact that these stories make headlines are a testament to their rarity. It is also getting more difficult to practice medicine due to the bulging waste lines...palpating organs is more difficult due to the fat folds so I can see how a tumor maybe missed in a 500 pound pt. On another note, spend a few weeks in a county ER, ride with an ambulance crew, spend a few days fighting with an insurance compnay to pay for something, or take a listen to some drone pharm rep lecturing about their product using scientific words and biostatistical analysis that were probably not taught between the time they left the sorority and the time they got the drug rep required implants and you will realize that making fun of these things is the only way to keep sane. I didn't even mention the paranoia at being sued by everyone you lay your hands on.....Or you can save yourself a week, read this book with an open mind and you will be inside the ER to see the 42 year old at 3AM for a cough they've had for the last 2 years but just got around to it at 3AM on a Friday or argue with the mom loaded with gold about the $4.00 bottle of Tylenol her kid needs...then watch her throw the Rx out getting in a better car than what you drive wondering why?
I sure hope this is farce..........2005-09-26
I sure hope this is farce. It reads like a bunch of articles written by the doctors of the several people I know who have been turned away by their doctors for being hypochondriacs (or worse, in case of the several "my favorite Munchausen" sections of this book), only to turn out to have incurable bone cancer, breast cancer, giant ovarian cysts, and blocked up gall bladders. If the first doctor had not called up the specialist for a laugh (see the "new doctor vs. old doctor" list), these conditions may have been caught before they reached the critical or fatal stage. Read this if you want to get inside the head of the doctor who told you that you're fat and lazy rather than the one who caught finally "caught" your 40-pound tumor (true story).
Better than NEJM or AAPA journal.......2005-05-31
LOVE love love this book. As 15-plus year PA in ER and General Practice have NOT had the "Residency" Blues but have incountered most if not all of the patients/providers in this book. If one cannot keep a sense of humor and balance, I question if one can truely provide "medical care". Big thumbs-up for Dr. Farrago, and can't wait for more books, columns, papers from The Placebo Chronicles!
Book Description
Traditionally, the effectiveness of medical treatments is attributed to specific elements, such as drugs or surgical procedures. However, many other factors can significantly effect the outcome. Drugs with nationally advertised names can work better than the same drug without the name. Inert drugs (placebos, dummies) often have dramatic effects on some patients and effects can vary greatly among different European countries where the "same" medical condition is understood differently. Daniel Moerman traverses a complex subject area in this detailed examination of medical variables. Since 1993, Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology has offered researchers and instructors monographs and edited collections of leading scholarship in one of the most lively and popular subfields of cultural and social anthropology. Beginning in 2002, the CSMA series presents theme booksworks that synthesize emerging scholarship from relatively new subfields or that reinterpret the literature of older ones. Designed as course material for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and for professionals in related areas (physicians, nurses, public health workers, and medical sociologists), these theme books will demonstrate how work in medical anthropology is carried out and convey the importance of a given topic for a wide variety of readers. About 160 pages in length, the theme books are not simply staid reviews of the literature. They are, instead, new ways of conceptualizing topics in medical anthropology that take advantage of current research and the growing edges of the field.
Download Description
Daniel Moerman presents an innovative and enlightening discussion of human reaction to the meaning of medical treatment. Traditionally, the effectiveness of medical treatments is attributed to specific elements, such as drugs or surgical procedures, but many things happen in medicine which simply cannot be accounted for in this way. The same drug can work differently when presented in different colours; drugs with widely advertised names can work better than the same drug without the name; inert drugs (placebos, dummies) often have dramatic effects on people (the 'placebo effect'); and effects can vary hugely among different European countries where the 'same' medical condition is understood differently, or has different meanings. This is true for surgery as well as for internal medicine. This lively book reviews and analyses these matters in lucid, straightforward prose, guiding the reader through a very complex body of literature, leaving nothing unexplained but avoiding any over-simplification.
Customer Reviews:
The meaning response.......2004-12-25
Daniel Moerman places the words "Placebo effect" in quotations because he believes that the placebo effect should be redefined. A placebo, he explains is inert. It has no causal effect. A more appropriate definition of the placebo effect he asserts is the "meaning response."
It is because of our beliefs and the meaning we assocate with a placebo that determines its effectiveness. Despite this simple formula for determining who will respond to a placebo, it is not a very good predictor for a given individual at a given time. Studies show that there is no method to determine which individuals will respond to a placebo. Attempts have been made to remove placebo responders from studies. Occasionally, researchers will conduct a precursor trial run with a completely unrelated substance to indentify those who might respond to a placebo in an effort to cull these responders from the "real study". These attempts have been futile.
No reliable indicators have ever been found that identify individual placebo responders. In fact, a person who responds to a placebo in one study has no increased likely hood of responding to a placebo in subsequent studies. More remarkably, if one eliminates the approximately one third of the populace who initially respond to a given placebo, the remaining group will contain about the same proportion of responders in subsequent studies.
Moerman never makes the connection between these facts and the parallels to natual physical laws at the quantum level. And though they might be only coincidental, I think it worth the comparisons.
Note that a placebo has no causal effect, but instead it is meaning that determines the "effect" of a placebo. The late physicist David Bohm asserted that the entire universe is organized at all levels according to meaning. If this is true, then it substantiates Moerman's claim that meaning is operating at the macro level. But the similarites to physical law don't end here.
Moerman observed that when placebo responders are eliminated from a group, the same statistical relationships hold for the remainder of the group--approximately one third of the remaining group will still be responders in the next study.
Simlarities can be drawn with quantum processes such as the jump of the electron in orbit around the nucleus of an atom or the well-known process of nuclear decay. If one knows the half-life of a mass, it is possible to calculate exacly what proportion of the substance will remain after a given amount of time, yet nothng can be said about the transmutaion of any given atom. Divide the mass into two portions, and the half-life of each portion remains the same. As Moerman has shown this is exacly what we witness in placebo studies. It is possible to calculate statistically how many in a group will respond, but nothing can be said about which specific individuals will respond. In both cases, whether dealing with the placebo responders or nuclear decay, the process is determinate for the whole, but indeterminate for the individual person or particle. I have previously described this as a law--"nature conserves meaning".
Moerman documents many studies involving placebos from around the world. He notes that cultural differences, knowledge, and the practitioner all statistically contribute to the meaning response. In particular, it has been demonstrated that the character and personality of the physician has more to do with the outcome of placebo studies than the make up of the patient. Moerman contends that a positive and upbeat clinician or doctor transmits subltle cues to the patient making for a more positive outcome. He states that it is what the doctor "knows" that is important. If the doctor believes his patient has a possibility of getting a powerful drug, patients will do better than if he knows they will only be getting a placebo. The conclusion is sound, but the mechanism, I believe is dubious. I'm doubtful that some sort of "subtle" cues are passed onto the patient in such a consistent mannner. I wonder if it is reasonable once again to find the answer in physical law.
In the famous "double-slit" or "two-hole" experiments, it has been demonstrated that an "observer" is not necessary to change the behavior of particles. In fact, it is the mere possibility that the path or route of the particle can be determined at some point in the future that determines the outcome of the experiment. In experiments done by Marlan Scully at the Universtity of California at Berkeley it was found that it is our knowledge that determines the behavior of particles
"...It is our "potential" knowledge of the quantum system , not our actual knowledge that helps decide the outcome" (Davis, 1996).
Of course these associations with quantum processes are merely conjecture.
Daniel Moerman's book is well documented and it is obvious that much research went into this publication. If one wants a sound understanding of the placebo effect, or the "meaning response", this book is the one to read. Well done.
This book review by David Kreiter, author of "Quantum Reality: a New Philosophical Perspective".
Meaning, not placebo: Moerman gets it right!.......2003-03-21
As a family physician and behavioral scientist with strong interest in the "placebo effect", I can say without reservation that this is one of the best all-around reviews available. The "placebo paradox" has confounded reductionist thinkers for decades: if there is nothing in the pill, then how can it cause health effects? Dan Moerman doesn't have to take us far out of the conventional box to show that - of course - it isn't the inert pills, but instead the meanings attached with them that have influenced outcomes in so many scientific experiments. Meaning, belief and understanding govern how we think and feel, which in turn effect our physical and psychological health. Empty colored pills, sham surgery and suggestion lead to real health effects, even under the most rigorous of settings: randomized, double-blind, controlled trials. While reasonably comprehensive and highly accurate, this book is also accessible, as it is written with a style and flair that should prove attractive to most readers. Highly recommended it is!
Bruce Barrett MD PhD
Department of Family Medicine
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Book Description
New Yorker Magazine artist Tomer Hanuka collects his best comics work from the last five years, including stories previously published in Bipolar, the award winning comics series co-created with his twin brother. This collection of nine short stories deals with identity, memory, and destiny. From the hollow existence of twenty-something urbanites in Brooklyn and their magical parallel lives, to a dense psychological collage of a split-second lifetime, the stories touch a raw nerve we never knew we had.
Customer Reviews:
Pretty solid work.......2007-01-05
Great art with really good, and often very odd/surreal stories (but I think that was the goal).
Book Description
Do religious experiences come from God, or are they merely the random firing of neurons in the brain? Drawing on his own research with Carmelite nuns, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard shows that genuine, life-changing spiritual events can be documented. He offers compelling evidence that religious experiences have a nonmaterial origin, making a convincing case for what many in scientific fields are loath to consider—that it is God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain.
Beauregard and O'Leary explore recent attempts to locate a "God gene" in some of us and claims that our brains are "hardwired" for religion—even the strange case of one neuroscientist who allegedly invented an electromagnetic "God helmet" that could produce a mystical experience in anyone who wore it. The authors argue that these attempts are misguided and narrow-minded, because they reduce spiritual experiences to material phenomena.
Many scientists ignore hard evidence that challenges their materialistic prejudice, clinging to the limited view that our experiences are explainable only by material causes, in the obstinate conviction that the physical world is the only reality. But scientific materialism is at a loss to explain irrefutable accounts of mind over matter, of intuition, willpower, and leaps of faith, of the "placebo effect" in medicine, of near-death experiences on the operating table, and of psychic premonitions of a loved one in crisis, to say nothing of the occasional sense of oneness with nature and mystical experiences in meditation or prayer. Traditional science explains away these and other occurrences as delusions or misunderstandings, but by exploring the latest neurological research on phenomena such as these, The Spiritual Brain gets to their real source.
Customer Reviews:
Bad Science, Bad Theology.......2007-10-11
This book is hailed by religious believers, as it appears to support a dualistic view of the human mind. It is attacked by those who hold a purely materialistic view.
However, the reason why this book is horribly bad has nothing to do with philosophy. The book is bad because it presents misinformation, credulously accepts poor research, and occassionally bases arguments on mind-bogglingly stupid assertions (such as the claim that the nerve cell is made of 100,000 molecules on average; a statement of breathtaking ignorance; imagine someone publishing a book on human body, and starting with a claim that "an average adult human body contains approximately two ounces of bone" - how do you believe anything they say after that point?).
Again, this has nothing to do with materialism. If humans have souls, and if mind is indeed something separate from the brain, this book is still bad - its conclusion may or may not be true, but the "evidence" and "reasoning" it presents are distorted far outside the boundaries of truth.
The spiritual reality of the mind..........2007-10-11
The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul seems to tie together a number of avenues of investigation into the mind...
Beauregard and O'Leary have laid out a compelling case for a non-material entity known as the mind. They claim (p. 28) that "materialism is wrong in its assessment of human nature because it is not in accord with the evidence." What is that evidence?
* Quantum Zeno effect. Investigations into quantum mechanics have revealed that unstable elementary particles will not decay if they are continuously observed. Beauregard and O'Leary claim that, "...because your brain is a quantum system, if you focus on a given idea, you hold its pattern of connecting neurons in place. The idea does not decay, as it would if it were ignored." (p. 33) Using the mind to focus on certain thoughts keeps them in mind. Making a decision apparently allows one neural pathway to be active in preference to another.
* Mind can change brain. Various studies have shown that focusing (with the mind) on certain thoughts or intentions can cause physical changes in the brain. Jeffrey Schwartz has demonstrated that the mind can be used to alleviate obsessive-compulsive disorder, and that the physical structure of the brain actually changes as a result of active focusing of the mind.
* There is no God-Spot in the brain. Chapter 9 addresses Beauregard's research involving Carmelite nuns during mystical experiences. He and his colleagues used fMRI and EEG to assess the differential activity in areas of the brain during mystical experience. Their conclusion: "...[T]here is no single "God spot" in the brain located in the temporal lobes.... RSMEs (religious, spiritual, and/or mystical experiences) are complex and multidimensional and mediated by a number of brain regions normally implicated in perception, cognition, emotion, body representation, and self-consciousness.... [W]e know for certain that the mystical state is something other than an emotional state." (pp. 272, 275) Their findings contradict the materialist hypothesis that mystical and religious experience is simply caused by stimulation of specific areas of the brain, such as the temporal lobes (See the discussion of the God-helmet of Michael Persinger in chapter 4.).
* Some near death experiences (NDEs) cannot be explained within a materialist framework. Blind people see during NDEs. People who are clinically brain dead report being conscious and provide details of the surgeries that brought them back to physical life. NDEs are much more common than most of us think. "NDErs showed high rates of key attitude changes years later (for example, loss of fear of death) relative to non-NDE patients.... [S]imply facing up to death does not induce NDE life changes. If so, almost all heart-attack survivors would change their lives, and research show that they do not." (pp. 162-3). The mind can function in the absence of a physical substrate. This is strongly supportive of the non-materialist view of mind.
* Placebo effect. Simply telling patients that a drug will work is many times enough to make it effective, thus the idea of sugar pills. This is a well-known and well-documented phenomenon that is pervasive in the healing arts and must be accounted for in clinical trials. It is also an excellent example of the effects that mind (non-material) can have on the body (material). (See chapter 6 for a discussion of placebos and the related nocebo effect.).
* The psi effect, which suggests that the mind can communicate with other minds and with inanimate objects without having any physical contact or obvious means of communication. These phenomena are bizarre, but apparently real! Recent books by Dean Radin and Lynne McTaggart have addressed psi phenomena at length and have made a good case for the capability of mind influencing physical entities in the world such as random number generators. Meta-analysis suggests that controlled studies of mental telepathy from 1974-97 support the reality of this phenomenon, with odds against chance falling at about 1015 to 1. (pp. 170-1) "A meta-analysis looking at 832 RNG (random number generator) studies conducted during the last decades showed odds against chance beyond a trillion to one." (p. 171) RNG studies involve subjects trying to influence the outcome of RNGs simply by focusing on trying to cause more zeros or ones from a binary RNG. Statistical analysis has confirmed this psi effect many times.
The authors conclude, "Materialist neuroscience cannot reduce mind, consciousness, self, and RSMEs to `mere neurobiology.' I think that the evidence supports the view that individuals who have RSMEs do in fact contact an objectively real `force' that exists outside themselves." (p. 290) I agree.
The mind is a spiritual reality. The brain is a physical reality. Beauregard and O'Leary have argued that the mind cannot be explained by simply stating that it is a natural outcome of the complex nature of the brain, and they also argue that no good naturalistic explanation for the mind exists. Well and good, but the trick is to show that no naturalistic explanation for the existence of mind could exist. Does their argument hold up well enough to support the hypothesis that the mind is a spiritual entity which is dependent on the brain while present in a human body, but also exists after the brain ceases to function? Along with some other important contributions to the field, such as the aforementioned works by McTaggart, Radin, and Schwartz, The Spiritual Brain provides a coherent evidence-based argument for the reality of the mind. A strict materialist may not agree, but should read the book because it does an excellent job of laying out the non-materialist view for all to see and discuss. Definitely read this one...
Plausibility arguments to rage against the darkness.......2007-09-30
There's a certain nobility and intrinsic plausibility to the modern version of substance dualism promoted in this genre of books. Yes, the mind must be more than the brain in some sense. Yes, 19th-20th century materialism, though a useful promissary framework for two centuries, is probably eventually doomed to the intellectual archives. No, the arguments here are not simply based on superstition or wishful thinking.
HOWEVER. The essence of the argument in this book is simply taking the evidence for physical explanations of mental events, and appealing to our intuition that they seem implausible on the surface. Of course mechanical explanations of mentalistic phenomena seem implausible on the surface, that's what makes them valuable scientific data points. They are anomalies to our everyday experience. You can't (shouldn't) ignore data points simply because they are incompatible with our preexisting intuitions about how nature works. What it comes down to is that the author is trying to make arguments for substance dualism (the mind must come from somewhere outside the brain) seem more plausible than the various scattered (but numerous and varied) data points showing how experience relates to brain processes.
As a reasonable, open-minded reader of this book, your impression of it will I think depend almost entirely on your imaginative predisposition to believe the plausibility that a mind can somehow be properties of a brain. Not, I suspect, some sort of objective weighing of evidence. The author is probably right that our explanations of the human first person perspective are primitive and intuitively unsatisfying. Personally, I also think the author is wrong that we cannot have a naturalistic explanation of first person perspective, human consciousness, and human intentionality.
I say this for two main reasons. First, I think that naturalism (though not materialism) is required _logically_ for physical causal explanations. There is no plausible mechanism for something "outside of the physical world" to interact with the physical world, by definition of what it means to be a physical cause of something. So we are arguing something incoherent when we start with the claim that something outside of nature is causing something in nature, or caused by something in nature. This is the standard naturalistic philosophers view, I think, and I buy it completely and find no remotely reasonable argument in this book against it. From my own perspective, this book makes the usual substance dualist error of arguing systematically the case against materialism, while simultaneously claiming that naturalism must also be wrong. Even if our understanding of matter completely changes, or we find things "other than matter" in some sense in nature, our explanations become of a different sort if we also make the leap to say that there is something "other than nature" such as a fre-floating spirit or soul.
Second, there are abstractly plausible natural explanations for the origin of mind that line up far better with physical evidence and our existing legacy of facts of nature than does the concept of a soul. For example, see Read Mantague's "Why Choose this book?" for an engaging speculation on the origins of human consciousness and human intentionality in the selection pressure for efficient computing, which plausibly could have evolved a mechanism for building and selecting among virtual machines in the brain that capture the known qualities of human consciousess and intentionality. No it isn't as easy to comprehend or as initially satisfying as a "soul," but it has the advantage of being able to potentially generate lot of directly testable implications.
Yes, the mind is more than the brain in some sense. Yes, classical materialism is fading in some ways with our growing appreciation of the complexity of the natural world. Yes, the facts of nature make our universe a dark, cold, and largely uninhabitable and meaningless place. Yes, the brain is surely spiritual in some sense. But no, I don't think the author plausibly makes the case that we should reject naturalism in our best scientific theories in order to rage against cold, dark matter.
The quest does, however, have a certain real human appeal to it and surely it is sometimes nice to see something balance out the worst excesses of the opposite sort, the "eliminative materialism" which says that the mind can be entirely reduced to the brain ontologically as well as causally, rendering psychological, intentional, and first person accounts meaningless. I think that view goes too far as well, for technical as well as purely human reasons.
A good readable synopsis of naturalistic vs. materialistic approaches to mind can be found in:Mind: A Brief Introduction (Fundamentals of Philosophy)
An excellent historical and conceptual account of the various major mind-brain relationship theories in science:The Science of the Mind
A good readable example of a speculative modern framework for human mind based on state of the art computational and biological theory: Why Choose This Book?: How We Make Decisions
Solid, comprehensive, thought-provoking...does your mind exist outside of your brain?.......2007-09-29
Do you have a mind or are you just a bag of chemicals? Believe it or not, many neuroscientists, as smart as they may be thought to be, believe the latter. Not so neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and his co-author Denyse O'Leary.
This book takes a sober look at godless materialists' claims that your and my minds don't really exist, but are nothing more than artifacts of chemical processes. In so doing, it is a very interesting and wide ranging assemblage of reviews of other studies, the reporting of original research on Carmelite nuns, and the authors' conclusions.
As anyone with a couple of connected brain cells should intuitively know, we certainly do have a mind. The authors present compelling evidence to confound the materialists, including electromagnetic experiments on the brain (i.e. the "God Helmet"), where materialists had once claimed any thoughts, particularly those tied to God, were nothing more than physics and chemistry.
Other fascinating insights focus on "mind over matter" issues, (or mind over brain, so to speak), such as the well-known placebo effects in medicine, which materialists often seek to discredit but are extraordinarily well documented, and good MDs seek to take advantage of.
In a chapter is entitled "Are Mind and Brain Identical?", the book examines the question in the light of facts relating to how damaged brains adapt (neuroplasticity, which is opposite of the decades old dogma that adult brains don't change), amputee "phantom limb" feelings, and others.
Perhaps more interesting, there are discussions on the concepts of "self", "consciousness", and "free will", none of which are explainable via the "bag of chemicals" materialism, but each of us experiences first hand.
The book examines documented examples of so-called "out of body experiences", where the physically unconscious person's brain was documented to have been clinically dead, and yet the "person" recovers and their mind recalls events in the emergency room that were taking place during that time.
Inquiring minds seeking data and critical thinking about such issues owe themselves a copy of this thought-provoking book to read and refer to. "Bags of chemicals" can give it a pass.
Highly recommended.
Is the mind the brain?.......2007-09-28
One article on this book was headlined "Your mind doesn't get the credit it deserves." That seems to summarize the book "The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul." The authors present the case for the view that the mind is distinct from the physical brain. Current dogma in neuroscience is that the mind is the brain, an idea that is due to the philosophy of materialism, the convection that physical matter is all that exists. I first began to question this idea when confronted with patients that had brain damage, such as from Alzheimer's. One patient I remember in particular was largely a vegetable, totally unresponsive to humans. She did not talk or even attempt to communicate with those around her. One day out of the blue she stated in perfect sentences with clear English "It is rather chilly in here. Could you please turn up the heat? I am getting a chill." She then stopped talking. The staff I questioned about her noted that she occasionally would come out of her inner world and communicate to those around her, albeit always very briefly. Is she a brain or is she a mind trapped in her brain due to the illness? Is she still the same person she was before her illness, only unable to relate to the outside world? When her brain deteriorates, does she as a person deteriorate? I do not know the answer to these questions but I do know that these questions should be explored. It is for this reason that this book very much interested me and, so far, I have not been disappointed. I was not all that impressed with the study of the 15 Carmelite nuns, but the rest of the book was excellent. Highly recommended, and I would like to see more research into why many severely brain damaged patients have short periods of total lucidity. We have enough cases to enable this topic to be studied in more detail.
Book Description
A mere "symbol" of medicine--the sugar pill, saline injection, doctor in a white lab coat--the placebo nonetheless sometimes produces "real" results. Medical science has largely managed its discomfort with this phenomenon by discounting the placebo effect, subtracting it as an impurity in its data through double-blind tests of new treatments and drugs. This book is committed to a different perspective--namely, that the placebo effect is a "real" entity in its own right, one that has much to teach us about how symbols, settings, and human relationships literally get under our skin.
Anne Harrington's introduction and a historical overview by Elaine Shapiro and the late Arthur Shapiro, which open the book, review the place of placebos in the history of medicine, investigate the current surge in interest in them, and probe the methodological difficulties of saying scientifically just what placebos can and cannot do. Combining individual essays with a dialogue among writers from fields as far-flung as cultural anthropology and religion, pharmacology and molecular biology, the book aims to expand our ideas about what the placebo effect is and how it should be seen and studied. At the same time, the book uses the challenges and questions raised by placebo phenomena to initiate a broader interdisciplinary discussion about our nature as cultural animals: animals with minds, brains, and bodies that somehow manage to integrate "biology" and "culture," "mechanism" and "meaning," into a seamless whole.
Customer Reviews:
Worth the read.......2007-09-09
This collection of essays, while now a bit dated, still has much to offer if you are interested in this topic. The contributors have excellent credentials, varied perspectives and different points of view. This is a fresh change from just hearing the mantra of one author's spin on the placebo effect over and over in their book. If you want to really understand the placebo effect, I believe that you really have to have an open mind. This book can help you in that endeavor.
Great read.......2006-01-26
This one is a great read especially for those interested in the power of the mind. Great study information as well to back up some of the rumors out there. I found the "Nocebo" one of the most interesting parts of this book.
Best book on placebos yet to be written.......2005-11-03
I'm currently working with author and professor Andrew Newberg on the biology of belief and the neurophysiology of spiritual experience, and this book is the gold standard when it comes to understanding how this mysterious process works. Today, the question is not whether placebos work, but how they work. Depending upon the condition being treated, the effectiveness of placebo treatments can range anywhere from 0% to 100%. Pain is the most amenable to placebo treatments, which suggests that pain regulation is closely tied to the same neural mechanisms that control conscious awareness and memory. Suggestibility, expectations, conditioning, emotions, and desires also play essential roles in explaining the analgesic effects of placebo.
For illnesses involving depression and anxiety, the placebo effect accounts for a 25-35% success rate, while anti-depressant drugs only have a 35-45% success rate, according to statistics published by the drug companies themselves. This suggests to me that it is one's optimistic belief that is largely responsible for the alleviation of depressive symptoms. On the other hand, the fact that nearly two-thirds of depressed individuals do not get better may be related to deeply embedded beliefs that reflect a more pessimistic stance about the world. According to David Morris of the University of Virginia, one of the contributors to this anthology, placebos "place belief and meaning at the center of the therapeutic encounter" and that "positive beliefs in the efficacy of medication or treatment are necessary to underwrite a placebo effect, while disbelief actively subverts it."
Positive beliefs had the power to heal, whereas negative beliefs had the power to injure, and this framework can be applied to spiritual beliefs as well. One can even speculate that those who do not inherit a bias towards optimistic beliefs are less likely to survive and pass on their genes to others.
The power of placebo goes a long way to explain a variety of health claims made in the fields of alternative medicine and psychotherapy, for it may be the mutually-agreed-upon belief systems of both the patient and the doctor that accounts for the high degree of success achieved. Unfortunately, this also opens the door to considerable fraud, for a person can market a bottle of water and claim to have a 30% to a 100% success rate in treating an almost endless list of symptoms. In a similar manner, fads are successful because a large amount of people concurrently agree that the object of the fad is beneficial. You not only have the power of belief on your side, but you have the power of consensus as well.
Great Help!.......2000-10-24
I used this book for science project research. I found it tremendously helpful although in some places a little hard to follow for a high schooler.
Book Description
see comment for hardcover edition
Customer Reviews:
Must Reading!.......2005-07-29
A beautifully written and deeply profound book on healing. Even if you have explored alternative medicine and/or spiritual literature for years this book will likely trigger a very deep reflection on your core beliefs about healing. My highest recommendation!
THE BEST BOOK I EVER READ.......2003-11-18
This is truly a fascinating, life changing book. If you are willing to change your beliefs, this book will alter forever the way you view health and your innate capacity to heal yourself. Faith in the procedure,from shamanism to high-tech treatments, brings about healing. Bye bye dogmas and rivalries for the best methods of treating disease. Your health is in your mind.This is revolutionary.
Revolutionary.......2001-12-15
Author Kuby does an incredible research job, and writes with such clarity--this book will revolutionize the way people look at the medical industry, and prompt them to take more responsibility for their own health. It is very good to see these ideas put into print in a way that anyone can understand and benefit from.
Stunningly Powerful Read!.......2001-11-22
I read this book with a bit of skepticism about the topic but it didn't take me long to be convinced that you definitely have the power to heal yourself.
Dr. Kuby cured herself of breast cancer and lived with the lump for 8 years with absolutely no pain or problems.
Her book is an encouraging and well-written account of the power we all possess to heal ourselves.
It is one of the best books on the market for those interested in medicine and health.
I have yet to find a book to compare it to with regard to dispelling the myth of Doctor as G-D. The most enduring quote from the book, regarding the Hippocratic Oath, was "First, do no harm" which encapsulates the ideology behind this most wonderful book.
A Fascinating View of Medicine.......2001-11-21
I was skeptical at first, but Lolette Kuby is a powerful writer, so once I started reading this book I had to continue to the end. I read it for the enjoyment of reading, but have to admit that Kuby's arguments are compelling enough to have significantly changed my views of health, healing, and life.
I'm not a total convert. For example, as a type-1 diabetic, I'll continue to take insulin. Perhaps if I had grown up with Kuby's insights I could have avoided this medical condition in the first place, but now I don't feel that I have the power to deal with it without the help of conventional doctors. Yet I have found that positive mental attitudes toward other conditions--arthritis, anemia, and minor issues such as athlete's foot--have helped far more than any expensive prescription medication.
I tell my friends to read this book for enjoyment. This author will keep you turning the pages. At the very least, you'll have a good read. But it's also possible that you'll have a major life-changing experience.
Book Description
Based on a meeting in November 2000, this book brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to examine the biological, behavioral, social, cultural and ethical aspects related to the placebo effect. Perspectives on the necessity for including a placebo in randomized clinical trials will also be examined.This is the first attempt to examine the evidence-base of the placebo effect and will provide important information for clinicans.
Book Description
Since the days when doctors routinely made house calls and sat by the bedside offering comforting words along with medical care, the doctor-patient relationship has become increasingly impersonal and superficial. As medical technology and treatment have improved, and time constraints have become more demanding, the beneficial effects of meaningful doctor-patient interactions have too often been overlooked. Nonetheless, objective clinical trials have repeatedly shown that real, measurable benefits to the patient occur through the "placebo effect," the positive effects of the doctor's presence and personality plus the patient's belief in the efficacy of the treatment.
Dr. W. Grant Thompson, a frequent consultant on the design of clinical trials, reviews the history of the placebo effect and the evidence of its benefits to health in this lively, informative, and scientifically rigorous book. He looks at both the planned use of placebos in blind clinical trials and the unplanned placebo effects arising out of the doctor-patient relationship, the passage of time, and the perceptions of the patient. Dr. Thompson emphasizes that placebos in themselves have no intrinsic benefit; what matters is how the treatment is provided and under what circumstances. He argues that understanding the placebo effect is important for the care of the ill, the design of clinical trials, and healthcare policy planning. He contends that we should be using judiciously the best medical evidence, but even that can be undermined by insensitive delivery. Healthcare policy can only gain from taking both vital components of medical care into consideration.
Praised by the New England Journal of Medicine as "a gifted teacher and clinician with a talent for clear exposition," Dr. Thompson has written an important, accessible, and interesting work that deepens our understanding of both the tangible and intangible factors that affect health. He convincingly demonstrates that patients need the best that science has to offer combined with kind and compassionate care-giving by doctors in order for a treatment to be its most effective.
Amazon.com
Could a tiny sugar pill actually hold the secret to a miracle cure? In his well-researched new book, Dr. Howard Brody, a family practice physician and university professor, brings forward an intriguing, and provocative, premise about the healing effect of placebos, the much-maligned fake cure of popular lore. Brody asserts that while placebos themselves have no medical value, time and again real illnesses and pain have been diminished by their use.
According to Brody, the placebo phenomenon--which he pronounces mysterious and unknowable at its very heart--is when the convergence of healing signals, assigned meaning, and human expectations stimulates the body's inner healing power. The patient's positive mental and emotional reaction to a medical intervention releases what Brody terms the "inner pharmacy." In other words, even though the treatment is benign, the body's biochemical pathways are stimulated to induce healing in the same manner actual medicines do. "Could harboring hope, faith, or expectation be genuinely potent factors in the healing process?" Brody asks, "I believe they are. In fact, I see them as the heart and soul of the placebo response."
In this lucid, easy-to-follow book, Brody lays the foundation for his argument by reviewing the history of placebo use as well as the results of several major studies. He takes ample time up front to explore a variety of theories about why placebos work, who responds to them, and the role of the medical provider in the process. The later half of the book is devoted to guiding individuals who wish to release their own internal healing power. One of Brody's primary contentions is that patients are not inert objects in this process: they must take control of their own health before the healing response can be unleashed.
Is the public's rising confidence in the effectiveness of alternative medicine partially a result of the placebo effect? According to Brody, the more personal, caring treatment offered by alternative providers could be more effective in releasing the placebo response in patients who do not respond well to conventional medical approaches. His premise: the tenor of the healing message as well as the carrier of that message are key to stimulating--or shutting down--the inner pharmacy. A provider who does not believe in the patient's ability to heal can inadvertently cause the opposite reaction--the "nocebo effect." If a patient expects to get worse, they often do just that.
While Brody's holistic approach, as well as his advocacy of a strong patient-provider partnership, are not new ideas, this wise, compassionate book thoroughly explores yet another angle of the mind's fascinating ability to induce true healing. --Marianne Painter
Book Description
From a distinguished physician and medical ethicist, here is the definitive scientific investigation of the mysterious mind-body healing process. Did you know that:You'll heal faster after surgery if you see trees and grass outside your window than if you're looking at a brick wall.After asthmatic children were given vanilla aroma to use with their inhalers, their asthma eventually improved in response to the vanilla alone, even when the inhalers contained no active drug.Some patients who had sham angina surgery performed in a double-blind experiment showed improvements lasting six months or more, which their physicians could not distinguish from the results in patients who had had the real surgery.When people watched a movie showing Mother Teresa taking care of the poor in Calcutta, their bodies secreted extra amounts of salivary immunoglobulin A, a major germ-fighting chemical.When Japanese teenagers, who were allergic to a tree similar to poison ivy, were touched with leaves from a harmless chestnut tree, they developed severe rashes. When touched with the poisonous leaves but told they were chestnut, they had no reaction whatsoever.When a new medical treatment is introduced with much excitement and hope, the first patients to receive it typically show a seventy percent positive response rate, even in cases where the treatment--on more careful study-is shown to be medically worthless.
The Placebo Response, grounded in comprehensive research, presents a convincing case that we can harness our inner pharmacy for better health and healing.
Customer Reviews:
The Healing Power of the Mind to Body With a Placebo Reaction.......2005-09-28
This book is loaded with information about the Placebo
response. This book proves in many ways that a placebo
response does take place in the human mind & body. It's good
info for physicians, patients, psychologists.
You will learn about how even a negative placebo response can
happen, psychoneuroimmunology, getting well by forgiveness, & much more. It's a fascinating subject.
Medical Professionals role in the Placebo Response.......2005-05-23
Every young intern wanting to become a good and effective doctor or nurse should read this book. Although the theme of this book is about the latest research and the applications of the Placebo phenomenon in medical healing,any reader of this book will surely sense this reccuring message that the sincere carings, genuine efforts,and empathy communicated by the medical care-giver as a positive message to the patient can actually stimulates the bodies's inner healing power,reinforcing the patient's positive mental response and faith towards the medication/treatment.
Wow.......2003-01-27
This book contains amazing info about placebo, research, and the practice of medicine.
I found it hard to get into his using-the-placebo-effect-for-your-own-health section... and it seemed kind of awkward that the book was divided in half... half-research and discussion, and the other half application...
But it's well worth it for the first part.
Book Description
Can we really cure ourselves of disease by the power of thought alone? Faith healers and alternative therapists are convinced that we can, but what does science say? Contrary to public perception, orthodox medical opinion is remarkably confident about the healing powers of the mind. For the past fifty years, doctors have been taught that placebos such as sugar pills and water injections can relieve virtually any kind of medical condition. Yet placebos only work if you believe they work, so the medical confidence in the power of the placebo effect has provided scientific legitimacy to popular claims about the healing power of the mind. In this intriguing exploration, Dylan Evans exposes the flaws in the scientific research into the placebo effect and reveals the limits of what can and cannot be cured by thought alone. Drawing on new ideas in immunology and evolutionary biology, Evans proposes a new theory about how placebos work, and asks some searching questions about our concepts of health and disease
Customer Reviews:
Scientific look at mental healing.......2004-06-12
In this investigation of the placebo effect, the author asserts that orthodox medical opinion has for decades been convinced about the healing powers of the mind. This confidence in the power of the placebo effect provides scientific legitimacy to the many claims about mental healing.
By exploring recent research in evolutionary biology and immunology, Evans proposes a new theory on how placebos work while investigating and evaluating current ideas of health and disease. He looks at the history of the placebo effect and investigates the efficacy of placebos by sifting the evidence and providing an opinion on which medical problems can be cured by its use.
In chapter 3, The Acute Phase Response, Evans sets out his theory of the function of a single biological mechanism in the placebo phenomenon; he also states that this is not a proven theory and needs much further research. The next chapter looks at the belief effect, the key mental event that triggers physiological processes that result in healing.
Investigating the physical and psychological aspects of health in evolutionary context, he also considers the potential of placebos to harm. In more metaphysical terms, one may say he looks at positive and negative mental energy, the curse and the blessing, but in scientific terms. Various alternative healing modalities are also discussed, as well as psychotherapy, which the author claims may be the purest placebo.
Ethical questions are considered next in the chapter The Witch Doctor's Dilemma. The author concludes that the impressive findings of recent scientific research in mind-body medicine have revealed that the healing power of the mind may not be unlimited, but that it is certainly not insignificant. The mind fights disease in many ways and one of those is to prompt us to take action, whether by the use of allopathic or alternative medicine. The book concludes with copious notes, a bibliography and an index. I have found this an honest and open-minded look at the healing power of the mind, albeit from a strictly scientific respective.
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