The power of these effects is hard to overstate. A rule of thumb is that 30 percent of patients in the placebo half of a drug trial will experience an improvement in symptoms. But the proportion may be much higher. Just like real drugs, placebo pills can produce stronger effects in larger doses. Patients will report greater relief when given a larger pill, or two dummy capsules instead of one.

　　Doctors expectations also contribute to the awesome power of the placebo effect. In a study of tooth extractions, patients were given either a painkiller or sham drugs. Some dentists were assigned to give either drug, without knowing which, but other dentists knew they would be giving only sham drugs. The patients whose dentists thought they had at least a 50-50 chance of giving a painkiller suffered significantly less pain.

　　Presumably, doctors transmit their expectations to the patient through subtle cues, often without knowing they are doing so. For this reason, all properly designed drug trials are double blind. But given that both groups can often guess from the side effects, even this precaution may not always crush the generation of expectancies.

　　1. Which of the following is NOT a feature of Western medicine?

　　A) It reduces the patients; self-healing powers.

　　B) It has the full support of high-tech machines.

　　C) It is very expensive.

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