{"id":107,"date":"2008-02-26T20:17:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-27T04:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=107"},"modified":"2008-02-26T20:17:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-27T04:17:00","slug":"law-order-victims-of-reality-unit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=107","title":{"rendered":"Law & Order: Victims of Reality Unit"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Prozac and its ilk prove to be<\/a>, for the most part, about as clinically effective as a sugar pill. Which kicks loose an idea for a story that’s been rattling around in my head for a few years now:<\/p>\n

A man diagnosed with terminal cancer is beating the odds with the help of a new drug recently approved by the FDA. The tumors have stabilised, perhaps even receded a little; he has already lived well past his mean life expectancy. It’s a breakthrough, a miracle \u2014 until a couple of statisticians from John Hopkins publish an analysis proving that the effect is pure placebo. Our patient reads the study. Within a month, he’s circling the drain. Within two, he’s dead.<\/p>\n

The next of kin charge the authors of the paper, and the journal that published them, with negligent homicide.<\/p>\n

Placebos work<\/i>, you see. The brain can do all sorts of things to the body; sometimes it just needs to be tricked into generating the right happy chemicals. Medical professionals know as much: it may not be the cure so much as the belief<\/i> in the cure that does the trick, and when you shatter that belief, you are knowingly stealing hope and health from every patient who heeds your words. You are, in a very real sense, killing them.<\/p>\n

Do we have here a legitimate argument for the perpetuation of ignorance? Medical professionals do not generally discourage the use of prayer in dire circumstance. It does no harm, after all. (Actually there’s some evidence<\/a> that it does<\/i> do harm; let’s set that aside for the moment.) But when you know<\/i> that placebo effects are real, and you go out of your way to disillusion some deluded flake who shows up on the ward convinced that her crystals and magnets will keep the tumors at bay… well, maybe education of the sick should be a criminal offense.<\/p>\n

I’m just saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Prozac and its ilk prove to be, for the most part, about as clinically effective as a sugar pill. Which kicks loose an idea for a story that’s been rattling around in my head for a few years now: A man diagnosed with terminal cancer is beating the odds with the help of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology","category-just-putting-it-out-there"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}