0 a substance that is not a medicine but which a patient takes, thinking it is a medicine. The purpose of a placebo is either to make a patient feel better because they think they have been treated, or to compare the effect of no medicine with the effect of medicine when it is given to other patients. -- placebo
Update on unethical use of placebos in randomised trials.
Doctors have a succinct phrase for relatively harmless medicine—placebos.
None of those placebos has reduced unemployment, but they have successfully held wages down.
The profession will not again put off with placebos.
Although these do not amount to an economic strategy, they are placebos which are of some benefit.
I am not sure whether the people of today, particularly the young, would be likely to accept placebos such as that.
He believes that a proportion of patients should be given placebos and that some of them will get well.
There are few reports to suggest that it achieves markedly better results than placebos.
