{"id":21833,"date":"2017-08-20T19:24:48","date_gmt":"2017-08-20T18:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=21833"},"modified":"2017-08-20T19:24:48","modified_gmt":"2017-08-20T18:24:48","slug":"are-some-operations-only-effective-because-of-the-placebo-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=21833","title":{"rendered":"Are some operations only effective because of the placebo effect?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The effectiveness of alternative or homeopathic medicine is simply down to the placebo effect, but it may be that a number of routine operations only achieve their efficacy through the same process. In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/2017\/aug\/20\/when-surgery-is-just-a-stitch-up-placebo-effect\">a fascinating article<\/a> in today&#8217;s &#8220;Observer&#8221; newspaper, one surgeon comes clean on what is going on:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cNobody is suggesting that a liver transplant, cancer surgery or a cataract operation is ineffective or down to placebo,\u201d says Andy Carr, a professor of surgery at the University of Oxford. \u201cBut for more routine surgeries, where outcomes are subjective things, such as pain or stiffness, there\u2019s good evidence that many are little more than placebo. Given that these operations cause risk to patients and cost to hospitals, that is good evidence that we should stop doing them.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The effectiveness of alternative or homeopathic medicine is simply down to the placebo effect, but it may be that a number of routine operations only achieve their efficacy through the same process. In a fascinating article in today&#8217;s &#8220;Observer&#8221; newspaper, one surgeon comes clean on what is going on: \u201cNobody is suggesting that a liver [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21833"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21835,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21833\/revisions\/21835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}