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We've heard repeatedly from the White House that they "encourage" Americans to get yet another COVID booster, which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved earlier this month. President Joe Biden received his own, last week, or so we've been told. While the president has received previous doses in public during press conferences, that wasn't the case this time. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre took a question during Monday's press briefing about such a decision for the president to have his COVID booster and flu vaccine out of the public eye. "Isn’t this a time when, you know, given...

Scientists have found shocking evidence that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine batches used in the European Union may have actually contained a sizable portion of placebos. The German regulator was aware of this and did not subject the batches to quality-control testing. The researchers, Drs. Gerald Dyker, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Ruhr University Bochum, and Jörg Matysik, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Leipzig, are two of five German-speaking researchers who have been openly raising concerns about the efficacy and security of the BioNTech vaccine (as it is known in Germany) for the past 18 months. They...

WSJ article on Ivermectin study

For those who suffered side effects following COVID vaccination, the adverse symptoms were likely well worth it — even if they didn’t really have to experience them. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 77% of those who received a dose of either vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson reported at least one non-local symptom soon after the jab, such as headache, fever, fatigue and muscle pain. But a new study published in the journal JAMA Network Open on Tuesday has revealed that nearly two-thirds of those symptoms were likely self-induced via what researchers...

Scientists wearing white coats explained they would be taking a small dose of a drug called iprocin, similar to psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. The study would be testing the effects of psychedelics and their environment on creativity. The iprocin would hit quickly, the students were told—within 15 minutes, then peak in about an hour, and fade. The effects could include any of the following: "improved mood, heightened cognition, emotional sensitivity, light sensitivity, hallucinations, sleepiness, tingling sensation of the skin, vivid recall of memories, increased perspiration, slurred speech, mild anxiety, slower reflex response, and dizziness.” The experiment was...

As stated, I am seeking a simple white, flavorless pill that I can occasionally take instead of consuming more actual pain reliever medication. Why? So that I don't become too reliant on pills to get through the day. So that I don't continue building new thresholds of tolerance, requiring even more of that same med. Such pain relievers can be rough on the organs of the body. Other reasons: So that I remain more clear headed during the days, during the times I need to drive, during the times when I'm expected to engage in conversation with people. Causes of...

Asperger's syndrome. A myth. An invention by government to punish its victims for government's failures. This is because the government is supposed to always be right to the left. But far from it the government even in its efforts to conceal its failings and the failings of socialism and public education continues to fail and continues to injure innocent people in the name of the greater good. Instead of punishing bullies, instead of allowing educational alternatives, the government has invented a phony and dubious illness called Asperger's syndrome to punish the victims of bullying so our lazy teachers and...

Alternative medical treatments rarely work. But the placebo effect they induce sometimes does ON MAY 29th Edzard Ernst, the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, will step down after 18 years in his post at the Peninsula Medical School, in south-west England. Despite his job title (and the initial hopes of some purveyors of non-mainstream treatments), Dr Ernst is no breathless promoter of snake oil. Instead, he and his research group have pioneered the rigorous study of everything from acupuncture and crystal healing to Reiki channelling and herbal remedies. Alternative medicine is big business. Since it is largely unregulated, reliable...

“The star attractions were these three effigy dolls dunked upside down in this brown liquid. One of them had my name, and the other two had the names of investigators.” Each doll had pins in its eyes, he said. Attached to the dolls was the case number in the criminal charges. Hanrahan said that inside the home on Thorndike Road investigators also found their names wrapped around a baseball bat. “Even the U.S. marshals were spooked,” he said. Officials decided to find out the background of the shrine, with help of a UCLA professor.

Op-Ed Columnist The placebo effect is, potentially, one of the most powerful forces in medicine. The challenge is to harness that power in a reliable and systematic way. First, what is the placebo effect? It’s the improvement in health that some patients experience because of the feeling that they are receiving medical care. A classic example comes from drug trials. Suppose patients are randomly divided into three groups: those who get no treatment, those who get the drug that’s being tested, and those who get the placebo treatment — typically a pill that looks and tastes like the drug, but...

Instead of ignoring the placebo effect, doctors should try to enhance it, says a Harvard Medical School professor. Though recurring tummy aches from irritable bowel syndrome are among patients' most common complaints, drugmakers have had trouble coming up with a safe and effective treatment. But in 2008 Harvard's Ted J. Kaptchuk devised a safe remedy that helps far more people than any designer drug ever did. His magic cure: fake acupuncture delivered with lots of warm talk from a sympathetic acupuncturist--but no needles. In a trial of 262 patients with severe IBS, 62% of those who received the fake treatment...

Some widely prescribed drugs for depression provide relief in extreme cases but are no more effective than placebo pills for most patients, according to a new analysis released Tuesday. The latest study may settle a debate about drugs like Prozac. The findings could help settle a longstanding debate about antidepressants. While the study does not imply that the drugs are worthless for anyone with moderate to serious depression — many such people do seem to benefit — it does provide one likely explanation for the sharp disagreement among experts about the drugs’ overall effectiveness.

Placebo Effects: Part 1 By: Satyajit Das Mixed Metaphors… Botanical commentators are finding ‘green shoots’. The astronomically minded have seen ‘glimmers’. The meteorologically minded have spoken about the storms ‘abating’. Strong rallies in equity and debt markets have confirmed the recovery for the ‘true believers’. The Global Financial Crisis ("GFC") crisis is over! It is useful to remember Winston Churchill’s observation after the British expeditionary force’s escape from Dunkirk: "[Britain] must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory". There may be confusion between ‘stabilisation’ and ‘recovery’. The ‘green shoots’ theory is based on...

Don't try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

Will the almost $1 trillion stimulus plan being rushed through Congress help revive the economy? Right now that's all my institutional clients want to know. So when I meet with them, I have a page in my presentation book headed “What do we think of the stimulus plan?” Other than that heading, the page is blank. That's what I think about stimulus. Nothing. How can anyone seriously think that government rushing to commit all that money for a hodge-podge of projects, programs and that other thing that begins with “P”—pork—could possibly be of any particular help to the economy? Yet...

WASHINGTON - Many people like to stop and play with newborn babies, but now some adult women are playing house with fake babies. Some women are even going as far as taking day trips with the fake babies to the park, out to eat, and even hosting birthday parties for them. Forty-nine-year-old Linda is married with no children of her own. Now, she says she feels like a mother because she has Reborns -- dolls made to look and feel like the real thing. "It's not a crazy habit, like, you know, drinking, or some sort of, something that's going...

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE - Using ancient Chinese medical techniques, a small team of military doctors here has begun treating wounded troops suffering from severe or chronic pain with acupuncture. The technique is proving so successful that the Air Force will begin teaching "battlefield acupuncture" early next year to physicians deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, senior officials will announce tomorrow.

Enlarge ImageReal effect. Patients with a certain copy of a serotonin gene showed less amygdala activity (left), indicating reduced anxiety, after treatment with placebos. Credit: T. Furmark et al., Journal of Neuroscience To get a drug to market, pharmaceutical companies have to show that it works better than a placebo. But sometimes the placebo is just as powerful as the real thing. Just why our bodies respond so strongly to fake medicine has long been a mystery, but researchers are a step closer to solving that riddle, having picked out a particular gene that may be responsible for one...

Against Depression, a Sugar Pill Is Hard to Beat Placebos Improve Mood, Change Brain Chemistry in Majority of Trials of Antidepressants By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, May 7, 2002; Page A01 A new analysis has found that in the majority of trials conducted by drug companies in recent decades, sugar pills have done as well as -- or better than -- antidepressants.Companies have had to conduct numerous trials to get two that show a positive result, which is the Food and Drug Administration's minimum for approval. What's more, the sugar pills, or placebos, cause profound changes in...

Jennifer Buettner was taking care of her young niece when the idea struck her. The child had a nagging case of hypochondria, and Ms. Buettner’s mother-in-law, a nurse, instructed her to give the girl a Motrin tablet. “She told me it was the most benign thing I could give,” Ms. Buettner said. “I thought, why give her any drug? Why not give her a placebo?” Studies have repeatedly shown that placebos can produce improvements for many problems like depression, pain and high blood pressure, and Ms. Buettner reasoned that she could harness the placebo effect to help her niece. She...