While we may not be quite synchronized to December’s gift giving “season”, forthcoming title has been brought to our attention that may be just the thing for your on library or a special occasion.

Colin Brewer is a retired psychiatrist and was a lecturer and research fellow in the department of psychiatry at Birmingham university in the 1970s. He was subsequently director of the alcoholism unit at the Westminster hospital before becoming the medical director and later research director of the Stapleford Centre in London. His published scientific papers cover abortion, obesity, suicide, anti-depressants, alcoholic brain damage and behavioural psychotherapy as well as addiction treatment.

Placebo and non-specific effects, which can be very powerful, are a major reason why religions arose and why people believe in gods and feel better after prayers, pilgrimages and religious rituals, as they do after taking objectively inactive medications but they can have most of these benefits without believing in the doctrines or in gods.

Using a mixture of personal case-histories, published research and history, The God Effect describes the many similarities between the benefits regularly claimed for religious ritual and prayer and the benefits claimed for the procedures and rituals of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). Most people had similar faith in orthodox medicine and its practitioners. They often felt better after treatment, though until about 1920, hardly anything that physicians did had useful effects on the symptoms, course and outcome of most illnesses. Many medicines were toxic as well as ineffective but impressive side effects, like impressive and demanding religious rituals, could persuade people that they were being healed even when diseases progressed. Illnesses with a large psychological component, including many illnesses with a physical basis, are especially susceptible to medical and religious placebo effects.

The God Effect describes modern versions of hysteria and demonic possession and gives previously unpublished case histories of Brewer’s successful use of placebo medicines and sham/placebo ECT (electro-convulsive treatment) at a time when this was not regarded as unethical.

Brewer summarizes modern randomized controlled trials (RCTs) which show that in some conditions, sham surgery has large placebo effects that are just as helpful as the full operation and describe the placebo effects that have been important in fields like war, sport and politics.

Brewer discusses prayers of intercession, miraculous cures and saint-making as a sceptical physician but also in the context of the Vatican’s long history of corruption and exploiting credulity. The God Effect rescues from undeserved obscurity Father Jean Meslier, an early atheist ‘placebo priest’ and introduce his modern equivalents. It examines in detail the psychological processes underlying placebo effects and their similarity with hypnosis.

A friendly critique of the ‘Three Horsemen of Atheism’ (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris) refutes their dismissal or neglect of placebo effects as an important factor in religion and notes a serious error by Stephen Pinker. It suggests that the therapeutic hubris of the founders of psychoanalysis and homoeopathy is as much a reason for rejecting them as negative RCTs.

The God Effect also examines and dismisses the claims of acupuncture but describes a unique study of patients who improved after sham acupuncture and were then debriefed. Other topics include the importance of charisma in healing professions, placebo effects in animals, and a newly-described ‘Katyn Massacre’ syndrome affecting religion and CAM. It offers persuasive evidence that our behaviour is strongly influenced by overt or subliminal reminders of death and mortality and integrate it with philosophical arguments that cheerful pessimism is better for mental health than positive thinking. Starting from the little-known fact that Britain’s first open atheist was a physician, Brewer argues that doctors may find it particularly difficult to believe in a benevolent deity. While Brewer notes the evidence of increasing disbelief among educated European citizens in a caring, personal God, he also recognizes and discusses the attractions and benefits of religious adherence. The experience of Denmark suggests that these benefits are essentially tribal in nature and that many of them can be obtained without belief in God or supernatural doctrines.

The God Effect ends with suggestions for research into using placebo effects deliberately and ethically with the aim of improving treatment outcomes. While it encourages cooperation between medical and religious healers, it emphasizes the need for doctrinaire believers to accept the fundamental human right of individuals to change or leave their religion and to reject belief in a deity.

Details of where (and when) the title may be acquired have not yet reached us…but we’ll update this article when they do.

Up For Discussion

If you’re interested in analyzing and discussing this issue, there are actions you can take. First, here at Humanist Heritage Canada (Humanist Freedoms), we are open to receiving your well-written articles.

Second, we encourage you to visit the New Enlightenment Project’s (NEP) Facebook page and discussion group.

Citations, References And Other Reading

1. Featured Photo Courtesy of : Colin Brewer
2. https://www.datathistle.com/event/598247-god-the-greatest-placebo-ever-sold-by-colin-brewer/

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