Egeth Marc
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Department of Radiology, 3400 Civic Center Blvd., Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States.
Med Hypotheses. 2009 May;72(5):606-7. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2008.08.034. Epub 2009 Feb 4.
Three separate but related ideas build on van Deventer's concept of the "meta-placebo" effect in which placebo effects are hypothesized to help patients even when patients know they are receiving a placebo. First, a method is proposed to experimentally validate the meta-placebo effect without lying to experimental subjects. Second, the idea of a meta-placebo is extended to a condition where patients experience many of the elements of placebo treatments that are hypothesized to cause placebo benefits, such as an optimistic prognosis by a doctor, but patients do not actually take a placebo pill: a "curabo effect". The final section proposes that patients might be able to experience enough placebo- and -curabo-related treatment elements to gain a beneficial effect without either a pill or a doctor. Instead, simply having the knowledge that one can derive medical benefit from placebo, meta-placebo, and -curabo treatments, and without medicine, might in itself suffice to cause some to feel better: the hypothesized meta-meta-placebo and -curabo (or "meta-bo," for short) effect.
三个相互独立但又相关的观点建立在范·德文特的“元安慰剂”效应概念之上。在这种效应中,即使患者知道自己正在接受安慰剂治疗,安慰剂效应仍被假定有助于患者。首先,提出了一种方法,用于在不对实验对象说谎的情况下,通过实验验证元安慰剂效应。其次,元安慰剂的概念被扩展到一种情况,即患者体验到许多被假定会产生安慰剂益处的安慰剂治疗元素,比如医生给出的乐观预后,但患者实际上并没有服用安慰剂药丸:即“治愈期望效应”。最后一部分提出,患者或许能够体验到足够多与安慰剂和治愈期望相关的治疗元素,从而在没有药丸或医生的情况下获得有益效果。相反,仅仅知道自己可以从安慰剂、元安慰剂和治愈期望治疗中获得医疗益处,而无需药物,这本身可能就足以让一些人感觉好转:即假定的元元安慰剂和治愈期望(或简称为“元安慰剂”)效应。