BMJ  2008;336 (3 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.39567.551181.47

Editor's Choice

Reclaiming the placebo effect

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Where do doctors add most value? Larry Brilliant—a public health doctor who has worked on programmes to eradicate smallpox, blindness, and polio—has found his niche as executive director of Google.org (p 986; doi: 10.1136/bmj.39548.369977.AD). Through an initiative called Predict and Prevent, launched earlier this year as one of five core initiatives that will focus Google’s philanthropic efforts over the next 5-10 years, Brilliant is building a global system to detect new disease outbreaks or disasters quickly and enable rapid responses. Compared to the one to one doctor-patient relationship, he says this role was harder and more fraught with moral error.

But for most of you who are reading this column, the biggest scope for adding value is in the clinical encounter. How? By making the right diagnosis and giving the right treatment, certainly. But how much of that added value is or could be achieved by what we tend . . . [Full text of this article]

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