IMO it's quite a simple explanation. You only have to watch 5 minutes of US advertising (I'm from the UK and living in Canada) to think you should have something wrong with you. If you think you should have something wrong with you for long enough, you will, it's called hypochondria and there's long been the suggestion of prescribing placebos to them until they're capable of getting access to a psychologist or psychiatrist.
You get the problem that when pills cure everything and you're sick and not on a pill, you worry. This makes you feel worse, which makes you sicker. The sugar pill not only has a placebo effect, but it also stops you worrying so really its having two effects opposed to the usual one we've classically seen.
When stress is the leading form of disease in the western world, you're going to have to remove stressed people from the drug tests to get impartial results. It just happens to suck that most sick people are stressed out. I guess they'll have to give a placebo to the test and control group to relieve stress and then give a second to the control group pretending its actual medicine.
You get the problem that when pills cure everything and you're sick and not on a pill, you worry. This makes you feel worse, which makes you sicker. The sugar pill not only has a placebo effect, but it also stops you worrying so really its having two effects opposed to the usual one we've classically seen.
When stress is the leading form of disease in the western world, you're going to have to remove stressed people from the drug tests to get impartial results. It just happens to suck that most sick people are stressed out. I guess they'll have to give a placebo to the test and control group to relieve stress and then give a second to the control group pretending its actual medicine.