THE placebo effect has been known about since the beginnings of medicine. Indeed, it used to be just about the only medicine doctors could offer their patients – reassurance that a treatment will work, with the result that it often did. What nobody realised until recently is just how powerful and complex the effect is.
It turns out that a patient’s state of mind, awareness of their condition and expectations of the care they are about to receive can influence pretty much every facet of medicine, from consultations with a doctor to clinical trials of a new drug. For example, one set of researchers has found that…
