Human beings try lots of different things (duh!). Take me for example: I have a disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth, which over time depletes the myelin coating in the body’s peripheral nervous system. Fortunately, I do not have an extreme case; in some people it is quite debilitating, and researchers are doing a variety of experiments to see if anything will help or fix this disease (I think most of us are placing our hope in gene therapy). One of the possibilities is to take a fairly high daily dose of something called Coenzyme Q-10, which does lots of good things for lots of other people. I have noticed, however, that if I am taking Q-10 outside of a study, I have no way myself of knowing whether it is beneficial to me if it is not immediately making me feel better, especially because the disease is progressive in nature but in fits and starts, and very often it plateaus; I have no way of knowing if I am at a plateau or if the Q-10 is working. And the reason that I have no way of knowing is that I have no “placebo Adam” who is not taking Q-10 and to whom I can compare myself.
Since the term “placebo effect” is already taken to describe something else, I am looking for a general term that will describe the following reality: whenever we do something that we think is good, we have no way of knowing at present whether it will have a beneficial effect. I would like the term to have the word “placebo” in it.
Here’s another example, perhaps the best one: considering the crappy state of the world, it’s very easy to say that philosophy, or religion, or poetry, or science, or loving another person seem to have no beneficial effect; after all, we do these things, and then the world continues to in many ways suck despite our efforts (or perhaps even because of our efforts). But we really have no way of knowing what the world would have been like had Plato never written, had Augustine never converted, or had the Hubble telescope never been built. Because really, we have no “placebo world” against which we can measure whether our “successes” were good or bad.
Is this then the purpose of history?
You would know if the Co-enzyme Q 10 is working if you have more energy and less fatigue than before you started. You might also want to try Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Citicoline and Curcumin. Lots more stuff on supplements people with Charcot Marie Tooth disease are taking at CMTUS.
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