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Previous Volume 338:1236-1237 April 23, 1998 Number 17

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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By Arthur K. Shapiro and Elaine Shapiro. 280 pp. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. $39.95. ISBN 0-8018-5569-1.

Henry K. Beecher chose "The Powerful Placebo" as the title for his influential paper published in 1955 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (vol. 159, pp. 1602–1606). In it he recounted the effects of placebos in 15 clinical trials involving a variety of diseases. Improvement ranged from 21 to 58 percent, the average being 35 percent. This figure has since been foolishly transmuted into a magical percentage of improvement to be expected from a placebo in any disease.

Recently, in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (1997, vol. 50, pp. 1311–1318), Kienle and Kiene have criticized Beecher's paper, concluding . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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