Youre given a pill for your headache, and the pain goes away.
Its then revealed that all you took was a sugar pill. Do you feel deceived by your doctor, or are you impressed by the power of the human brain?
So how do researchers navigate the ethics of using placebos, given it involves deception? And are GPs using the placebo effect without patients realising?
The Insight program meets a man who ran faster thinking he was using an EPO-like substance, only to find out he was simply injecting saline; and a woman who used her knowledge of the placebo effect to heal herself.
