Ian Harris on “Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo”
18th December 2020
Ian Harris, a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, wrote a book titled Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo. I haven’t read the book, but I watched his excellent YouTube video lecture on the subject. It is an eye-opening evaluation of commonly performed surgical operations that have been tested and shown to be no more effective (and arguably worse) than placebo, or that have never even been tested. He covers the history of sham surgery studies, talks about placebo effects, and explains why so many surgeons ignore the evidence and continue to do ineffective operations. In the process, he provides a valuable education in critical thinking.
December 19th, 2020 at 00:10
For many years it’s been documented that when hospitals close – due to strikes or bad weather, for example – the local death rate drops. Surgery sometimes kills people who might have otherwise continued to live for at least some time. Hospitals are also a great place to pick up an infection. In some cases, antibiotic resistant bacteria develop in hospitals.
My wife was in the hospital one January and a neurologist came to see her. I remember him saying, “First thing we need to do is get you out of this hospital. Staying here in January gives you about a one-in-three chance of catching pneumonia. What you have won’t kill you, but pneumonia might.”
December 21st, 2020 at 12:49
I make it a point to spend as little time in hospitals as I can get away with, to the point of discharging myself if I become convinced that they’re just holding me over so they can soak my insurance company.