After Placebo: In medical research and clinical practice

Placebo is so pervasive in medicine that it has been described as the one common element in all medical treatments in all of medical history. For common therapies that do not have large obvious effects, some researchers have gone so far as to view all therapy as placebo.

Yet no agreement has been reached on what placebo is, what effects it has or whether it even exists. The concept of placebo continues to perplex medical professionals, historians and philosophers.

What if we stop saying placebo?

Putting medical research and clinical practice on a placebo-free, dichotomy-reduced diet, Dr Robin Nunn outlines what's wrong with saying placebo and what might be said after we agree that placebo is no longer the way to say it.

The implications and opportunities for medicine and health are vast. We need new research literature, new textbooks, new training and new laws that expunge the notion of placebo or replace it with a clear admission that we just don't know, rather than continue to obfuscate in terms of placebo.