Originally Posted by
Brother Oni
In the article you quote, it states that the two classes of medicines assessed, anti-depressants and pain medication, have a statistically non-significant effect when compared to placebo. Both of these types of medicines have a major psychological component - the pain scale is entirely subjective for example and how do you objectively measure how happy a person is?
I would pretty much guaranteed that other types of medicines (antibiotics, COPD and asthma treatments, anti-cancer, etc) would have a statistically significant effect compared to placebo (a sugar pill won't cure your UTI; inhaling sugar won't stop your breathing problems; and a saline injection won't kill your tumour).
Combined with that the large majority of current drug development is in 'quality of life' medication, which include pain medication and anti-depressants, it's no surprise that placebos are apparently becoming more effective.