Dr. Kaptchuk is Associate Director for the Center for Alternative Medicine Research and Education at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA. He has a Doctorate in Oriental Medicine from the Macao Institute of Chinese Medicine and is fluent in Chinese. He is the author of The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine. Dr. Kaptchuk is currently Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research interests include the mechanisms of the placebo effect, the efficacy and safety of alternative medical practices, and the ethical implications of alternative medicine practices and research for both nonconventional and conventional providers.

In 1997, Kaptchuk was invited to sit on the World Health Organization's (WHO) Informal Discussion on Research Methodologies for the Evaluation of Traditional Medicine. Since 2001, he has served on the Advisory Board for Tufts Program in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine at Tuft's School of Medicine in Boston.

Kaptchuk also serves as an ad hoc reviewer for the professional journals Lancet, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Clinical Journal of Pain and American Journal of Public Health.

Bob Fulton asks:
Where it appears that other medications are not achieving the desired effect- in this case, pain relief - can a doctor prescribe placebo to the patient without telling the patient what the "prescribed medication" is? How would this be done?

Kaptchuk's response:
In general, the ethical standards of contemporary medicine does not allow deception and requires informed consent. In relationship to giving placebo, this interpreted to mean that one cannot give a placebo to a patient without telling them it is a placebo. Because people generally believe that saying something is a placebo makes it have less or no effect...the idea is generally not practiced. Some people have advocated trying and others have spoken of the need to do research to see what happens when you say you're giving a placebo. There was actually an experiment done by Park and Covi in the early sixties where several people with anxiety disorder were told they we're getting a placebo pill and it help them nonetheless. But this early experiment was too small and methodological weak to help in this regards.

Gloria Rohlfs asks:
I just saw the Alan Alda show re the research you are currently undertaking about the placebo effect and ritual and acupuncture. Is it possible to be placed on a list to receive information about the results of this research? Thank you.
Sincerely,
Gloria Rohlfs, Jin Shin Jyutsu Practitioner and Psychotherapist

Kaptchuk's response:
The best way to get the results of this research is to use the researchers last name and put it into a MEDLINE search from time to time. Or search for "placebo research" in MEDLINE.

Paul Schauert asks:
Your research is much needed, and is applicable in many contexts. belief is a powerful agent of healing that has been mostly neglected. i study ritual in west africa. i am curious to know when your study may be published? could you please discuss how you think the placebo effect may be applied when studying the experiences of spirit possession or trance states?
thank you

Kaptchuk's response:
It will take about a year to write up and submit our research. We still haven't finished the last patients. The placebo effect is probably a sterilized and tiny version of what spirit possession or trance does to people in cultures that accept these kinds of explanations for illness.

JoAnne Den Beste asks:
Have you ever considered some sort of questionnaire that asks the patient about what his/her beliefs are about their sickness i.e. what might have caused it, what might have to be done to cure it? I visited several different "healers" in the Philippines with a large group of people.

I observed that some people needed "divine intervention" such as prayer, some needed to feel great pain, some needed to believe some thing was taken out or put into their bodies, and some needed a commitment from a loved one to help in the treatment. Different "healers" used different techniques and I observed that depending on what a person seemed to believe, that would feel better.

I enjoyed watching this program but was surprised that it didn't seem like anyone was asking people what they thought they needed in order to feel better. We have been "brainwashed" by drug companies to believe we need drugs which, of course, is the basis of your research, but I think there is more that needs to be considered.

Kaptchuk's response:
Great question. In our current research we ask all patients their beliefs, expectations and general models of illness. We have two anthropologist also doing a sub-study within the study to get at people's health and illness models