Word: painfulness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...whimsy making the medical rounds has a pharmaceutical company petitioning the Food and Drug Administration for approval of a new pain reliever. The compound, to be packaged in red, white and blue capsules, will be sold with a label that is indisputably true: PROVED EFFECTIVE IN ONE-THIRD OF ALL CASES AND ABSOLUTELY SAFE. The nostrum's name: Placebo...
...milk sugar or talc or as injections of salt water. Such substances are considered pharmacologically inert, incapable of eliciting a response when prescribed in reasonable quantities. Yet studies have repeatedly shown that placebos help as many as 30% or 40% of patients with real enough ills, including postoperative pain, migraines, coughs, seasickness, arthritis, ulcers, hypertension, hay fever, even warts...
...Newton C. Gordon, all of the University of California in San Francisco, may have hit upon an answer. In an experiment involving dental patients having molars extracted, they gave them either a placebo or the drug naloxone, which is known to block the effects of endorphin, a morphine-like pain reliever produced by the brain itself...
...guard against any unwitting influences on the patients or themselves, the doctors did not know which "drug" was being used in any particular case until the end of the test. In the first phase of the experiment, patients who had received placebos experienced less pain than those in the naloxone group. But when the experiment was continued, patients initially in the placebo group but now getting the blocker experienced an increase in pain. In other words, the placebo response diminished. Levine's explanation: somehow placebos apparently activate a body pain-relieving system that relies on endorphin. Says he: "Placebos...
...Sandra Rachel, 36, a Dickerson, Md., housewife, the pain and stiffness were almost unbearable. Even dressing required aid. Often the swelling in her joints was so severe that she could not get out of bed before noon. No medications seemed to help. That was a year ago. Today Rachel can dress easily, do household chores and climb up the nine flights of stairs to her doctor's office. Her startling rejuvenation is in part the result of a novel experimental treatment that may eventually help many other victims of severe rheumatoid arthritis as well...