Cultural Variations in the Placebo Effect: Ulcers, Anxiety, and Blood Pressure

• DOI: 10.1525/maq.2000.14.1.51
• Publication Date: 2004-11-24T02:10:43Z
• Authors: Daniel E. Moerman
• Keywords: 03 medical and health sciences; Cultural Characteristics; 0302 clinical medicine; Double-Blind Method; Hypertension; Ethnicity; Humans; Placebo Effect; Anxiety Disorders; Ulcer; 3. Good health

An analysis of the control groups in double‐blind trials medicines demonstrates broad variation—from 0 to 100 percent—in placebo effectiveness rates for same treatment condition. In two cases considered here, drug healing covary with rates; is ultimate and inescapable "complementary medicine. " Several factors can account dramatic variation rates, including cultural ones. But because differs by illness, large effects one condition do not necessarily anticipate other conditions as well. Deeper understanding intimate relationship between biological processes will require close ethnographic scrutiny meaningfulness medical different societies, [placebo effect, ulcer disease, anxiety, hypertension, cross‐cultural variation]