Placebo Power

and why did weedom happen?

Jan 13, 2025

The main tool for the allopathic medical establishment to belittle and discount the practitioners outside this system is to suggest that placebo effect accounts for any of the successes in alternative medicine. But the placebo effect is a strong and valid component of healing power which should be accentuated and untilized for the benefit of patients.

In the first 2 decades of this century it had been increasingly difficult to find new drugs (particularly those impinging on the central nervous system) with activity that significantly exceeds placebo. Aggravating this is the nebulous form of study that relies upon patient assessments of of their own symptoms, which is harder to quantify than such things as blood pressure or heart rate, or various lab values used as markers of the physiological state. So influential is the placebo effect that no health care practitioner can claim success in healing a majority of patients without its benefits. At the time I received training, up to 40 percent of a drug's benefit was considered attributable to placebo effect. The efficacy of certain classes of remedies, such as those for cough are claimed by some to be up to 80% due to the woo.

Those hand holders, dispensers of chicken soup, and socially skilled practitioners are worthy of professional respect, because they are able to redirect the emotions and energies of their patients towards healing. They have the greatest command of the Woo Force, and are the envy of nerds everywhere.

One might fear that the placebo effect, responsible for so much of the efficacy of medical treatments, has been the victim of mistrust engendered by the disastrous decisions and protocols to address SARS CoV 2 spread (likely as a result of gain-of-function viral research in the U.S. and China) across planet Earth. However, this is by no means the first time that government agencies, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies have lied about their activities and their results.

To this observer from the inside, the treatment of COVID has been overall worse than the disease, leaving in its wake, a generalized mistrust of the allopathic medical establishment.

The deleterious effect of mistrust upon the placebo effect inspired a new word: "nocebo" to describe that negative expectations by the patient can result in treatment failure.

(I’ll stick with topic of the placebo effect, rather than address various suspicions that programs of population reduction might have also become an integral part of the health care industry.)

A percentage of stalwart folks maintain some faith in government regulated and managed health care, However if one were to measure this by COVID jab uptake, the percentage of faithful has dwindled to barely double digits. Problems with vaccine contamination, safety and efficacy have provided fuel for vaccine opponents who might be quelled with data (if it were made available) rather than censorship.

A less discussed destroyer of placebo effect is the government managed mixing of killing and healing which has returned to health care. This is widely legalized in the U.S. and in Canada, as well as numerous other countries. Healers have been placed in charge of killing the very young and the sick or elderly when they are unwanted, or are feeling that way. This mixing of functions brings about obvious conflicts which change the relationship of health care provider and patient, and this change can't help but have a serious effect upon the placebo effect. For the most successful, life extending outcomes, a patient needs to believe that their health care giver is strictly intent upon their well-being, and wishes for them to wake up the next morning.

If the caregiver also has duties to shorten the lives of patients, then it's difficult to have 100 percent trust that they are fully invested in prolonging any particular life. Adding complication (and conflicts of interest) is the market for body parts from the euthanized patients or from humans killed early in development. In fact, the fetal cell lines are ubiquitously employed in medical research and drug development and production, and are easily purchased from such scientific supply companies such as Thermo Fisher. Currently in Canada the hot medical topic is whether to legalize removal of organs from patient who are to be euthanized, with the organ removal being the cause of death. Good quality organs would thereby be obtainable from depressed or physically disabled patients who request the 'medical assistance in dying'.

Preventative care was not a thing for the shamans of old, who were respected or feared for their ability to either poison or heal a patient. Lately the term 'shaman' is applied to various animistic practitioners who ascribe intelligence and spiritual agency to the plants or modalities that they utilize. These practitioners may also vary with respect to beliefs about poisoning, as do the modern allopathic practitioners, and likewise the extent of their placebo power might also vary based upon their job functions and reputation.

It will be awhile before people find the way to stop killing each other, particularly with the majority of people not having moral conflicts about certain types of killing. The pluralistic societies contain people with widely varying beliefs concerning circumstances under which the death of another human may be exogenously initiated.

Until such time that we as a species attain absolute benevolence, I propose that the functions of killing and healing be separated again, per the teaching of Hippocrates, so as to maximise the healing power of the placebo effect. When people have confidence that their health care provider does healing only, the assurance of general benevolence can give them greater confidence in the purpose and outcome of the ministrations.

The Oath OF Hippocrates — From "The Genuine Works of Hippocrates", Volume II, 1849. Translated from Greek by Francis Adams. Screenshot 2025-01-11 175021. 1914 Print by New York Academy of Medicine, listed by Sandmarg Etsy Shop: 98552973

A triple grouping of practitioners might be adopted, allowing patients who choose to stop treatments for terminal conditions to be given palliative care, thereby preventing earlier than expected demise, while also preventing those who care for the dying from being forced to take on the responsibility that comes with killing another human.

Maintaining the freedom to avoid killing patients might make the licensed health care careers attractive to a more diverse portion of the population.

Those who believe that actively ending life is OK could take up that specialty for providing the legalized, killing services. This would be the most straight forward way to address the desires of those who want someone else to kill them, while leaving full strength placebo effect in place for those patients who do not desire to leave this world at a given time.

During the next few years, social media will become more open by demand, and information which has been actively suppressed will become more available to those who are interested in it. The relationship between governments and the people will change quite a bit. The responsibility for self care will rest more upon the individual and less upon the governments, partly because the availability of resources and caregivers will continue to decrease, so long as there are requirements to mix the killing and healing functions in health care.

Alternative medicine and preventative medicine, which is largely happening outside of the government licensed, regulatory environment can assume ownership of the full strength placebo effect, and will grow in success and influence so long as the practitioners can assure the prospective clients of their benevolence and their competence. In some respects, the benevolence is more assured because herbalists in most places don’t have a government sanctioned, license to kill, nor mandates to carry out. Despite their varied personal beliefs about killing, their practices, outside of government regulation, are more supportive of life.

This discussion has meandered to the point where I should tell you the main reason I gave two weeks notice to my health care employer a couple years ago. The public health agencies were acting in increasingly nonsensical ways, particularly the FDA (the “standards” of which are upheld in pharmacy practice). An increasing number of drug approvals were ridiculous, and though I had always maintained a varied list of drugs that I would not dispense, and had changed practice settings accordingly, I finally lost hope that I could continue practicing pharmacy without doing harm to patients. It was time to go. At the time of this decision, it was in my mind to return to my prior roots in natural products chemistry (pharmacognosy), and to make an attempt to introduce this kind of information to anyone who’s interested in improving their health. I also wish to offer my nerd power to advise herbalists in compounding more uniform and inherently efficacious natural medicines in their non-industrial settings. Backing up that powerful placebo effect with natural plant chemistry is a good thing.

I will continue to introduce beneficial weeds, and will write posts addressing some concepts for ensuring high quality nutritional or medicinal benefits from the plants. I’d like to encourage people who want to start a herbalism practice to study a bit of chemistry, and to especially familiarize themselves with human physiology. A number of the herbalism schools are taking up both subjects, because this knowledge is vital for competency. Although I have some conventional academic credentials (biology, pharmacognosy, medicinal chemistry, pharmacy) and licensure, I’m convinced that it’s possible, and now even preferable, to learn these things outside of the (overpriced and often failing) academic systems, and I encourage people to do so.

Lately it’s been a little harder to obtain inspiration to write, because the winter weeds are in hiding. But this unusual weather will soon pass.

10-12 inches of global warming fell on us last week, which is an unusual accumulation at weedom. We have some biiiig icicles.

The most difficult part of writing is the effort to drop respectable and readable portions of information that can be truly useful to the most people. Editing is what takes up the time. Your questions and feedback are welcomed. They improve the Stack. Weedom is for preserving health and life, and the Creator who orders me not to harm patients also tells me to have no paywalls on the posts. Weedom is for everyone! But $upport from those who win the lottery or otherwise have bucks aplenty is gratefully accepted. (And SubStack wants that for sure :-D ) Those who are sharing weedom with others are equally appreciated. Thanks especially to all who got to the end of this post!

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Placebo Power

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