Dr Ginette Nachman

Dr. Ginette Nachman

Ginette Nachman, MD PhD holds doctorates in medicine and clinical psychology.  Her areas of specialization include research and presentations in mind/body medicine and nonlocal aspects of consciousness and healing. She has served as a Board Member and Director of Education for the Rhine Research Center, where she is currently a Research Associate.  She is also a member of the International Association for Near Death Studies Physicians Advisory Board. In addition, Dr. Nachman has spent 11 years comparing placebo and treatment effects in clinical trials as a medical writing scientist for the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Exploring the Interface Between Placebo Effects and Non-Local Aspects of Healing/Consciousness
Ginette Nachman, Rhine Research Center, Durham, NC, USA.

Recent years have witnessed a flurry of research and interest in understanding and elucidating the mechanisms of action of placebos. While viewed as annoying confounds in clinical trials there is also increasing appreciation for what placebo responses can tell us about the body’s healing capacities. Researchers have identified a number of factors that appear to contribute to placebo effects such as expectancy, conditioning, and perceived meaning including the psychosocial context of treatment interactions. In addition, researchers have highlighted factors such as regression to the mean and normal disease course that need to be distinguished from placebo and active treatment effects. Most of this research has focused on interpreting placebo effects in terms of mind/body interactions localized within an individual. However, there is a large body of research supporting the possibility that individuals can interact with each other non-locally, i.e. one person’s mind may be able to influence or interact with another person’s mind/ body. In addition, research into non-local aspects of consciousness suggests that individuals may be able to access information non-locally. Findings such as these raise fundamental questions including whether it is possible to truly blind researchers or participants from knowing whether placebo or active treatments are being employed, whether researcher bias may influence presumed random allocation of participants to treatment groups, and whether entanglement may occur between placebo and active treatment groups. These considerations have implications for placebo research as well as research into nonlocal aspects of healing. In this paper we will consider ways in which findings from placebo research can inform research on non-local healing, and ways in which research on non-local mind/body interactions and non-local aspects of consciousness can inform placebo research.