Video: The Mind Overrides Medical Treatment

This is a case study of a woman treated for intractable asthma with what both the doctor and the patient believed was a powerful new, experimental drug. The doctor, in disbelief over the rapid cure using the drug, believed the drug company had sent a placebo. To test whether the drug supplied to him by the company was real or a placebo, the doctor made up his own placebo and administered it to his patient. She got worse following this second treatment. That proved to the doctor that the drug company had actually sent a powerful new asthma medication. He then called up the company to see if he could get another shipment of this powerful new medication. He was then told by the company that what he had received was actually a placebo.

Why do you think his patient got well on the placebo from the drug company and worse on his own placebo? It is most likely because the doctor, unconsciously and nonverbally communicated to the patient that he knew his own concoction was a placebo.