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Pharmaceutical companies have big financial incentives to keep this kind of information out of the public consciousness.


Not really. Placebos are cheap to make, and require the user to believe -- i.e. benefit from marketing.

In our society, I could see the following: the $10 sexily-marketed placebo pill / treatment must be better than the $2 knock-off, so people buy the $10 pill. Okay, they likely won't be buying $50k / year treatments, but all of a sudden the meds only cost cents to produce.

Pharma => Apple


Or, you know, they could exploit the actual pain-killing mechanism discussed in TFA...




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