The placebo effect has an evil twin and it can be deadly

In late 2022, as the fentanyl drug overdose epidemic raged across America, police officers making street busts of the synthetic opioid began experiencing what they believed were “life-threatening” reactions.In Florida, an officer lost consciousness after touching a powder she thought was fentanyl.She felt “light-headed … I was choking.

I couldn’t breathe,” the officer told a local Florida TV station.Her department blamed her frightening reaction on fentanyl exposure.In Ohio, the arresting officer in a fentanyl case who discovered a “speck” of white powder on his sweatshirt suddenly became disoriented and unsteady on his feet.

He told BuzzFeed News at the time that he remembered “panicking, trying to talk,” and then falling.NYPD cops were not immune.In 2024, during a fentanyl bust in a Bronx apartment, two responding officers suddenly became ill.EMS was called as fumes from the lids holding the drug filled the apartment.

One cop was treated at the scene; the other at St.Barnabas Hospital.Again, fentanyl was blamed.But, “things are not quite what they seem,” writes Dr.

Helen Pilcher in “This Book May Cause Side Effects: Why Our Minds Are Making Us Sick” (Abrams Press, out now).There is a “misplaced belief” among cops, Pilcher notes, that “fentanyl can do this … is strong enough [in minute quantities] to skew the brain’s prediction machinery and cause … frightening symptoms.”But, the author asserts that the officers “did not overdose at all.

They had functional seizures.They collapsed because they expected to collapse.” Pilcher writes that these instances are prime examples of “the nocebo effect,” which she describes as “the placebo effect’s evil twin, night to its day, yin to its yang, Hyde to its Jekyll.”When people wrongly attribute positive health outcomes — like a headache subsiding or a cough quelling — to a useless sugar pill, it’s a placebo effect.

When they wrongly believe they have been e...