Sunday, March 18, 2007

The Nocebo Effect

This is the title for one of Mark Joyner's posts in Atomic Mind Bombs... and where I enjoyed writing a comment.

In it, Mark asks his readers to choose between the intention and the action - then tidy it all up by considering the Law of Unintended Outcomes - if one must really choose to make a considered choice at all... in light of The Nocebo Effect: Placebo's Evil Twin.

For you own amusement... why not check out the entire thread?

Here's just one comment inside...

Hi Mark!

Perhaps you intended for the question left the reader to point his answer to some response devoid of relevant meaning - at least insofar as it might pertain to the substance of this question's preceding sentences.

Or some relevant information was unintentionally omitted.

Either way, scientific experiments employing placebos or nocebos are too often used by medical researchers to help skew data results which have been deliberately massaged to reach their intended conclusions - all the while, simultaneously obfuscating the fact that the research results of other pertinent data has been purposefully withheld.

When the complete test results are finally revealed by a disgruntled former employee's call-in to a whistleblower hotline - after-the-fact of a harmful drug's release to 1000s of unsuspecting victims - criminal charges are likely to be filed, and if found guilty, the conspirators and their paymasters will all be rounded up like rabid dogs and sent to an Abu Ghraib-style prison in a southern red state.

Here they will be handed a rag and a mop for latrine duty and be forced to listen to very loud rap or head-banger music day-in-and-day-out.

Since these convicted felons will no doubt be seen as well-connected to the drug trade by the prison insiders they will soon become welcome companions to those who control the prison media. Their financial assets should then be confiscated, and the funds funneled to hire multitudes of broke, out-of-work detectives, working on a per diem and commission-only basis, to shake down the assorted lawyers and politicos who defended them - not to unintentionally forget the "untouchable" big shot drug dealers who initially funded the bogus scientific research in the first place.

These respected members of elite society, should they be convicted for their crimes in a kangaroo-style military court - as they most certainly will - may then cry foul and demand appeals of their harsh sentences. But, alas, after being denied bail, they too will be remanded to the custody of their jailers - themselves high on prescription drugs for clinical depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, or some other new disease.

Forced to wallow in their own delusional thoughts while awaiting their individual trials, their "hail-fellow-well-met" former colleagues will proceed to scrupulously bleed them dry.

When these scumbags are successfully separated from their ill-gotten gains, like the others before them, their dirty money will in turn be funneled to pay psy-op crazies - like those trained to perform lawful assassinations, steal elections, and who know their way around poison pills, truth serums, shock treatments, and other fun stuff.

Their mission: Surreptitiously administer nocebos to the highest-ranking government operatives inside the White House and members of the press corps - wherever they dine together or can be found lurking in the hallways with newspaper editors, marauding television moguls and their Congressional cronies.

The really dirty work can be subcontracted out to internet marketers, publicists, admen and other assorted grifters and con artists - those specially trained to make these criminals and their cohorts feel self-satisfied as they blissfully run around on their daily shopping sprees.

These actions are necessary to cover up the fact that, deep down, these bastards, sick as they are, have actually been sickened further by their dastardly doctors and psychoanalysts with - you guessed it - the nocebo effect!

After they've been totally fleeced of most or all their ill-gotten gains too, the psy-op guys will then move in and successfully implicate them in various Enron-style sting operations for which they purport to know nothing. After being bankrupted, they will be forced to throw themselves on the mercy of other sick lawyers - the ones with poor language skills, worn leisure suits and less-than-perfect smiles.

The blowback one may find apparent here is that this comment will probably be seen as subversive and otherwise nonsensical - thus totally ignored.

This will have unfortunate consequences for those who don't take action at once to stop these crimes of ignore-ance.

To do nothing is to rot in hell - unless of course this entire exercise is meant for amusement purposes only - mired though we may still be in our paralyzing groupthink.

If this be the case, then your post has served quite a useful purpose – we can call it...

Mission: Accomplished!

Best regards,

Lark