Published 20 April 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1568
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1568

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It’s time to put the placebo out of our misery

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

We need to stop thinking in terms of placebo. The construct of the placebo has shifted several times during its history, from the periphery to the mainstream of medicine, from the lie that heals to a confounding factor in experiments, and to powerful medicine.¹ I hope we will see another shift as we look back without nostalgia on the placebo, just as we look back on Galenic medicine and its humours, which were once plausible and useful but whose time has passed. It’s facile, however, to cite historical change as evidence that the placebo construct is unstable. All sorts of concepts change over time. So let’s stick with what’s wrong with the current placebo era and what could be right about a post-placebo era.

Shapiro and Shapiro described placebo as the only treatment common to all societies and cultures.² Apparently almost anything can be a placebo, and a wide variety . . . [Full text of this article]

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