1996-1997

Publication of experiments of Benedetti with placebo, naloxone, etc. show that “Placebo treatment can dramatically reduce pain compared to no treatment, but only if the subjects know it is happening. It is not the placebo itself that reduces the pain . . . It is the knowledge of the placebo that does the trick” (Moerman, 106). Benedetti then showed, with active medication as a constant, that “subjects who were given open injections by a clinician needed less medication to get pain relief than did the secretly medicated patients” (108).