<story><title>Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.</title><url>http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>patio11</author><text>My take away from this is that, in addition to checklists, one low-cost intervention to improve healthcare would be to have the doctor spend a few minutes chatting the patient up and expressing cheery optimism about their prognosis.  If the doctor&apos;s time is too valuable, find some unemployed psych grad with good people skills and put him in a lab coat.</text></comment>
<story><title>Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.</title><url>http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>indiejade</author><text>Theory:  there isn&apos;t anything really all that wrong with most people; it&apos;s all in their minds, so the placebo works.&lt;p&gt;Watch the evening news on a network and count the number of advertisements you see for prescription drugs.  I did this a couple of weeks ago watching the CBS Evening news, a half-hour program, and about 65 percent of the commercials were for pills of some sort: migraine pills, anti-depression pills, pills for seniors, etc.&lt;p&gt;The prescription drug industry in the US has got a slimy underbelly; it goes out of its way to convince people that there&apos;s something &quot;wrong&quot; with them, and then falls all over itself attempting to pat itself on the back for &quot;curing&quot; them.</text></comment>