Pills Without a Secret
For decades, the placebo effect was treated as a nuisance, something to be subtracted from the results of a clinical trial so that the real effect of a drug could be seen. More recently, researchers have begun to study it in its own right, and one finding has proved particularly puzzling. In several small trials, patients with chronic conditions reported less discomfort after taking pills they had been told openly were inactive. Deception, it seems, may not be essential.
One explanation is that the ritual of treatment, the regular routine and the attention of a doctor, prompts the body to respond regardless of what the pill contains. Sceptics caution that the trials have been modest in size and that self-reported symptoms are easily influenced by expectation. Even so, the results raise an uncomfortable question about how much of medicine's power lies in the encounter rather than the chemistry.