Ted Jack Kaptchuk (born August 17, 1947) is an American medical researcher who holds professorships in medicine and in global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. He researches the placebo effect within the field of placebo studies.
Ted Jack Kaptchuk (born August 17, 1947) is an American medical researcher who holds professorships in medicine and in global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. He researches the placebo effect within the field of placebo studies.
Kaptchuk was born in Brooklyn, New York; [1] his parents were both Polish Holocaust survivors. [2] He holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Columbia University, where he co-founded the university's chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, [2] and a degree in Traditional Chinese medicine from the Macao Institute of Chinese Medicine. [3]
Kaptchuk had an herbal and acupuncture clinic in Boston for many years starting in 1976. [2] In the 1980s he was clinical director of the Pain Unit at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital. [3] In 1990, he became associate director of the Center for Alternative Medicine Research and Education at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, also in Boston. [2] In 2011, he became Director of the Harvard Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter at Beth Israel Deaconess. [2] [4] Although he does not have a medical degree, [2] he has been a faculty member at Harvard Medical School since 1998, a professor of medicine since 2013, and professor of global health and social medicine since 2015. [3]
Working with Kathryn T. Hall and others Kaptchuk has led many studies of the placebo effect, including the role of genetic markers that identify people who people who respond best to placebos. [5] Some of this work suggests that placebos may still work despite disclosure that they are placebos. [6] [7]
Kaptchuk has served on panels for the NIH and FDA, and worked as a medical writer for the BBC. [8] He has written more than 300 peer-reviewed publications (h-index=100, i-index=275). [9]
Kaptchuk has been awarded three Lifetime Achievement Awards including Society of Acupuncture in 2015, Society of Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies in 2021, and the William Silen Lifetime Achievement Award in Mentoring from Harvard Medical School in 2022. [10] [11]
On October 10, 2023, an article, entitled "No Better Than Placebo", in The New York Times by Kaptchuk noted that some current medicines on store shelves were found to be "ineffective" (notwithstanding the "1962 Drug Efficacy Amendment" of the "Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act") based on studies and acted, if at all, as placebos. Kaptchuk concluded that "placebo effects can be significantly enhanced in the context of a supportive, respectful and attentive patient-relationship" [12] after recalling his earlier studies showing that "non-specific effects can produce statistically and clinically significant outcomes and the patient-practitioner relationship is the most robust component" [13] and "open label placebo could offer a possible supplementary intervention in some chronic conditions and an honest approach for a watch-and-wait strategy". [14]
Kaptchuk is an observant Jew. [2]
Acupuncture is a form of alternative medicine and a component of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in which thin needles are inserted into the body. Acupuncture is a pseudoscience; the theories and practices of TCM are not based on scientific knowledge, and it has been characterized as quackery.
Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability or evidence of effectiveness. Unlike modern medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect, alternative therapies reside outside of mainstream medicine and do not originate from using the scientific method, but instead rely on testimonials, anecdotes, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural "energies", pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources. Frequently used terms for relevant practices are New Age medicine, pseudo-medicine, unorthodox medicine, holistic medicine, fringe medicine, and unconventional medicine, with little distinction from quackery.
A placebo is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value. Common placebos include inert tablets, inert injections, sham surgery, and other procedures.
A randomized controlled trial is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. Examples of RCTs are clinical trials that compare the effects of drugs, surgical techniques, medical devices, diagnostic procedures, diets or other medical treatments.
In a blind or blinded experiment, information which may influence the participants of the experiment is withheld until after the experiment is complete. Good blinding can reduce or eliminate experimental biases that arise from a participants' expectations, observer's effect on the participants, observer bias, confirmation bias, and other sources. A blind can be imposed on any participant of an experiment, including subjects, researchers, technicians, data analysts, and evaluators. In some cases, while blinding would be useful, it is impossible or unethical. For example, it is not possible to blind a patient to their treatment in a physical therapy intervention. A good clinical protocol ensures that blinding is as effective as possible within ethical and practical constraints.
Auriculotherapy is a form of alternative medicine based on the idea that the ear is a micro system and an external organ, which reflects the entire body, represented on the auricle, the outer portion of the ear. Conditions affecting the physical, mental or emotional health of the patient are assumed to be treatable by stimulation of the surface of the ear exclusively. Similar mappings are used by several modalities, including the practices of reflexology and iridology. These mappings are not based on or supported by any medical or scientific evidence, and are therefore considered to be pseudoscience.
A nocebo effect is said to occur when a patient's negative expectations for a treatment cause the treatment to have a worse effect than it otherwise would have. For example, when a patient anticipates a side effect of a medication, they can experience that effect even if the "medication" is actually an inert substance. The complementary concept, the placebo effect, is said to occur when positive expectations improve an outcome. The nocebo effect is also said to occur in someone who falls ill owing to the erroneous belief that they were exposed to a physical phenomenon they believe is harmful, such as EM radiation.
Ben Michael Goldacre is a British physician, academic and science writer. He is the first Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford. He is a founder of the AllTrials campaign and OpenTrials, aiming to require open science practices in clinical trials.
The Declaration of Helsinki is a set of ethical principles regarding human experimentation developed originally in 1964 for the medical community by the World Medical Association (WMA). It is widely regarded as the cornerstone document on human research ethics.
In the United Kingdom, Ireland, and parts of the Commonwealth, consultant is the title of a senior hospital-based physician or surgeon who has completed all of their specialist training and been placed on the specialist register in their chosen speciality.
The word placebo was used in a medicinal context in the late 18th century to describe a "commonplace method or medicine" and in 1811 it was defined as "any medicine adapted more to please than to benefit the patient". Although this definition contained a derogatory implication, it did not necessarily imply that the remedy had no effect.
Sham surgery is a faked surgical intervention that omits the step thought to be therapeutically necessary.
Irving Kirsch is an American psychologist and academic. He is the Associate Director of the Program in Placebo Studies and a lecturer in medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is also professor emeritus of psychology at the Universities of Hull and Plymouth in the United Kingdom, and the University of Connecticut in the United States. Kirsch is a leading researcher within the field of placebo studies who is noted for his work on placebo effects, antidepressants, expectancy, and hypnosis. He is the originator of response expectancy theory, and his analyses of clinical trials of antidepressants have influenced official treatment guidelines in the United Kingdom. He is the author of the 2009 book The Emperor's New Drugs, which argued most antidepressant medication is effective primarily due to placebo effects.
George Lewith was a professor at the University of Southampton researching alternative medicine and a practitioner of complementary medicine. He was a prominent and sometimes controversial advocate of complementary medicine in the UK.
Hugh MacPherson was a professor of acupuncture research at the University of York, founder and trustee of the Northern College of Acupuncture, founder and co-ordinator of the international STRICTA group, clinic director of York Clinic, fellow of The College of Medicine, and a practising member of the British Acupuncture Council.
Asbjørn Hróbjartsson is a Danish medical researcher. He is Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and Clinical Research Methodology at the University of Southern Denmark, as well as head of research at Odense University Hospital's Center for Evidence-Based Medicine. He is the former editor-in-chief of the Danish journal Bibliotek for Læger. He is also affiliated with the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen. He received his Ph.D. in June 2001 from the University of Copenhagen, with a thesis entitled Are placebo interventions associated with clinically important effects? He is best-known for a 2001 article he co-authored with Peter C. Gotzsche on the placebo effect. The article reviewed 114 studies comparing placebo treatment to no treatment, and concluded that placebos did not have clinically important effects for any condition, with the exception of self-reported pain and other continuous subjective outcomes. He has also co-authored a subsequent paper on placebo effect research with Ted Kaptchuk and Franklin G. Miller.
Joseph Gavin Collier is a British retired clinical pharmacologist and emeritus professor of medicines policy at St George's Hospital and Medical School in London, whose early research included establishing the effect of aspirin on human prostaglandins and looking at the role of nitric oxide and angiotensin converting enzyme in controlling blood vessel tone and blood pressure. Later, in his national policy work, he helped change the way drugs are priced and bought by the NHS, and ensured that members of governmental advisory committees published their conflicts of interest.
Vitaly Napadow is an American neuroscientist and acupuncturist. He is a full professor of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Radiology at Harvard Medical School. He is also the Director of the Scott Schoen and Nancy Adams Discovery Center for Recovery from Chronic Pain at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and Director of the Center for Integrative Pain NeuroImaging at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a former president of the Society for Acupuncture Research. He has been a pain neuroimaging researcher for more than 20 years. Somatosensory, cognitive, and affective factors all influence the malleable experience of chronic pain, and Dr. Napadow’s Lab has applied human functional and structural neuroimaging to localize and suggest mechanisms by which different brain circuitries modulate pain perception. Dr. Napadow’s neuroimaging research also aims to better understand how non-pharmacological therapies, from acupuncture and transcutaneous neuromodulation to cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness meditation training, ameliorate aversive perceptual states such as pain. In fact, his early career was known for researching acupuncture and its effects on the brain. He has also researched the brain circuitry underlying nausea and itch. He is also known for developing a novel approach in applying measures of resting state brain connectivity as potential biomarkers for spontaneous clinical pain in chronic pain disorders such as fibromyalgia.
Azeem Majeed is a Professor and Head of the Department of Primary Care & Public Health at Imperial College, London, as well as a general practitioner in South London and a consultant in public health. In the most recent UK University Research Excellence Framework results, Imperial College London was the highest ranked university in the UK for the quality of research in the “Public Health, Health Services and Primary Care” unit of assessment.
Kathryn T. Hall is a leader in placebo research, Assistant professor of medicine part-time and molecular biologist who directs research or teaches at several institutions, including the following:
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