They should sell Placebos at Tesco. It would stop the locals loading up on paracetemol and ibuprofen.
Actually.... how much does it cost for the NHS to dish out Placebos?
There's some interesting debates about placebo use in medicine.
Part of the pro side though, is being found to be based on studies with bad methodology and controls.
Like the study claiming that the color of the placebo pills made a difference in its effect. When the study itself was very small, allowing for variations in the participants to shift the results, among other problems.
There was the research into a type of knee surgery that was shown to have the same results as placebo, but it was reported as proving the power of placebo instead of the failure of that surgical method.
There's the long trend of doctors prescribing antibiotics to deal with patients who just wanted a treatment for a virus.
Which the doctors did and the patient went off feeling better, even though the antibiotics did nothing for their flu or cold.
There is something to be said that giving them something that you say will help, even if what's being presented doesn't do anything, does actually provide some benefit. At the very least making the patient cope better.
On the other hand it is fundamentally lying to a patient and charging them for a useless product.
Even doctors who hop onto whatever new medicine they've been presented with by a salesrep and getting kickbacks generally think they're providing a patient with something that could help them.
There's talk about Placebos being removed from testing regimens as well. As aside from a truly new method or medication, it's much better to compare them against existing treatments instead.
Certainly was a big way to get drugs to market or advertise them.