Placebo, good or bad?

I'm trying to decide whether I like these or not.
I think I rather like the idea of a placebo. Sometimes, when a patient attends, you know they have nothing specific wrong, but they so want to take something to make them feel a little better. Some of my senior colleagues have dished out "tonics" to these patients, and the patients love them. "Oh I don't know what was in that medicine doctor but after taking it I feel much better". Nowadays though, I might get struck off for doing something like this. Or, with my luck, the patient's grandson will be a medical student or the patient will turn out to be the local pharmacist, and will corner me later to ask what on earth have I been prescribing and hadn't I better start prescribing proper medicines with some daleel behind them...

But, if the patient goes along and sees a practitioner of alternative medicine (something more and more GPs are now getting their hands into in the UK), they'll tell them what it is that's wrong, and prescribe a little bottle of something, and it'll have the same effect as the tonics. So they'll come back and tell me and I'll think again about why the "evidence based" health care system that I work for isn't doing me any favours.

However, when one of my relatives goes to see one of these people and pays an arm and a leg to get the little bottle of nothing, this I can't take. It just seems a mockery of good science, so this, I know, I would hate from the bottom of my nafs.

So in conclusion I think they are rather unethical.


What's wrong with the placebo effect?