Recent study suggested that there's a "nocebo" effect with statins. Drugs for cholesterol.
People who believe they're going to get harmed by statins, get harmed.
This by contrast with the "placebo" effect, whereby you anoint your little dough-ball with a few drops of aromatherapy, and it does you the world of good.
I was thinking about all these vaccines. What if people don't want them?
Not everybody - just enough to lift compulsory vaccination up the news agenda.
Call me paranoid, but I think I detect the beginnings of a soft campaign to disdain any idea that vaccines could ever be harmful - and I also think I'm old enough to have heard that before.
And if people are genuinely uneasy about vaccines, believing them to be potentially harmful, what then?
People who believe they're going to get harmed by statins, get harmed.
This by contrast with the "placebo" effect, whereby you anoint your little dough-ball with a few drops of aromatherapy, and it does you the world of good.
I was thinking about all these vaccines. What if people don't want them?
Not everybody - just enough to lift compulsory vaccination up the news agenda.
Call me paranoid, but I think I detect the beginnings of a soft campaign to disdain any idea that vaccines could ever be harmful - and I also think I'm old enough to have heard that before.
And if people are genuinely uneasy about vaccines, believing them to be potentially harmful, what then?