Continuing yesterday’s discussion about Bruce Lipton’s book, “The biology of belief”…
Another study he shares illustrates the placebo effect of surgery, in this case, knee surgery.
He wrote,
“A Baylor School of Medicine study, published in 2002 in the New England Journal of Medicine, evaluated surgery for patients with severe, debilitating knee pain…The patients in the study were divided into three groups. Moseley [the surgeon] shaved the damaged cartilage in the knee of one group. For another group he flushed out the knee joint, removing material thought to be causing the inflammatory effect…The third group got ‘fake’ surgery. The patient was sedated, Moseley made three standard incisions and then talked and acted just as he would have during a real surgery…All three groups were prescribed the same postoperative care, which included an exercise program.
“The results were shocking…the groups who received surgery, as expected, improved. But the placebo group improved just as much as the other two groups!…the results were clear to Moseley: ‘My skill as a surgeon had no benefit on these patients. The entire benefit of surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee was the placebo effect.'”
Lipton reported that televisions programs showed these unsuspecting patients running and playing basketball, doing things they could not do before surgery. They weren’t told for 2 years afterward that nothing had been done to their knees.
This is an outstanding example of the power of thought and expectations on experience. Now, to get to the conviction that the “operation” has already been performed by God!
Thank you, I also find the placebo effect facinating. But, wouldn’t these finding suggest that CS healing is also just another an example of the placebo effect? If the mind (small “m”) over matter effect is so powerful, how do we know that CS prayer is an expression of Mind (God)?
To above,
Sometimes people may use CS as a placebo. That’s what faith-healing is. The difference is to genuinely understand why you are well spiritually. That is CS healing.
This is so interesting, and exciting as it pertains to the growth of world though! I love reading these types of examples.
Many years ago the CS Journal published an article … I think the title was The Real Nature of Body, in which the author describes a medical study that was performed on a person with multiple personality disorder. Each personality manifested different physical ailments … when one personality was “out” it manifested a case of MS that disappeared when another personality came out. Imagine, all symptoms of MS GONE in an instant! Another personality manifested a scar on its body because that personality believed it had been in an accident … the scar disappeared from the body when that personality was not apparent in the present experience. SO COOL!
It’s great to see the world catching up to what Mary Baker Eddy discovered over a century ago!
Thank you for this series of blogs, Evan! Wouldn’t it be nice if the main stream press would bring these types of stories to the attention of main stream thought? Imagine the progress of healing that would occur!