The Perfect Placebo

I don’t think it is possible to care for people with chronic diseases and not appreciate the waxing and waning of symptoms and the effect of placebo interventions of all kinds. The last year, once again, showed me examples of placebo use in medicine. Sometimes their use was in the patient’s best interest. At other times, their used seemed mostly for the financial gain of a practitioner. Usually, the complexity of the situation was great. It is probably this complexity which made me feel I would only write this as a work of fiction.