I don't understand the attitude sometimes encountered in duiscussions like this one which says in effect, "oh, you weren't REALLY cured -- that was placebo effect."

I would suggest that if modifying a mental action by suggestion or belief brings about healing, you are looking at a far more powerful therapeutic approach, not one that should be invalidated; namely, a therapeutic approach that costs nearly zero to apply and is self-localizing in its effects. I have no idea exactly how much money pharmaceutical companies spend to make the chemicals they want to apply in the body get to the correct sites, and not effect the wrong ones, but I expect it is a major technical factor in the design of tablets and pharmaceutical compounds. USing the placebo effect would be like getting the remedy for the price of the label alone! How d'ye like them apples?

But of course, minds vary wildly and cases respond with different levels of confidence and result to suggestions. This area is a profound study, IMO, examining the nature of postulated realities (even when stimulated by authoritarian permission) on structural and organic physical objects. Sure it is unsettling if you believe in the all-mechnaism model of thought, but, well, tough.

If it works at all, you have what might be called a "white crow" phenomenon -- absolute rebuttal to the statement "all crows are black". This implies that an all-mechanism paradigm of human existence, encountering a definite but non-aligned (to the model) phenomenon, must be re-examined and its flawed assumptions identified.

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