Placebo Reactor

A dummy identifies those patients who can be disregarded, either because they need no treatment or else because they can be cured by psychological influences, and this is as reasonable a procedure as the exclusion from experiments with anti-asthmatic drugs of patients who do not have attacks of bronchial asthma.

Abstract

IT is often believed that there exist, in the community, certain individuals who are 'placebo reactors', and that these individuals must be excluded from a controlled clinical trial if the 'true' effects of the drug in question are to be correctly assessed. Glaser1 expressed the extreme view when he wrote "a dummy" [that is, a pharmacologically inert substance] "identifies those patients who can be disregarded, either because they need no treatment or else because they can be cured by psychological influences, and this is as reasonable a procedure as the exclusion from experiments with anti-asthmatic drugs of patients who do not have attacks of bronchial asthma".