Pharmaceutical-based medicine will be transformed when we work out how to utilise the placebo effect fully.

It’s not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It’s as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.

I guess there will be far more psychology involved in treatment: trying to work out which type of placebo are you more likely to respond to, even though we all know there is no active ingredient? Oddly, this suggests that homeopathy could be one of the recognised treatments in this new world.

Secondly, I wonder how much placebo effect there is in non-pharmaceutical treatment, even as far as surgery?