Toward a research agenda on placebo.

The placebo effect is about healing. The human healing process can be substantially influenced in actual medical practice by appropriate kinds of caring, communication, and patient empowerment. The creation of "meaning" and of "representations" by physicians and their patients can have dramatic effects on patients for good or ill. These effects are potentially as important in procedures such as surgery or chiropractic as they are in medicine generally. Placebo processes can substantially affect the overall response to health care and its cost, yet very little research specifically explores these phenomena. An explicit research agenda should be developed to investigate the influences of belief, context, and meaning in medicine. Such a research agenda would have significant beneficial scientific and policy consequences. In addition, it would enhance our understanding of those healing processes that underlie most if not all of medicine.