Placebos and homeopathy

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Ben Goldacre: A tonic for sceptics: Transparent modern medics often say: 'I don't know what the cause of your problem is. This might make it better, but it might not, and it might have these side effects.' They sometimes follow this with: 'What do you think?'

Enter the alternative therapist, who understands your problems whatever they are, who is privately employed and has time to listen, who has an answer and who gives a complicated (often wilfully obscure but always authoritative) explanation of what is going on, maintaining the power imbalance in the therapeutic relationship with his or her exclusive access to arcane knowledge. If that's not old-fashioned medical paternalism, I don't know what is, and the paradox is clear: while modern medicine, without even pausing to discuss the question, has championed patient autonomy and informed consent - and thrown the placebo effect out of the window - the market has shown that the old paternalism, in a new guise, is still very popular.

Whether mainstream medics would want to go back to the old ways and embrace the placebo-maximising wiles of the alternative therapists is an easy question: no thanks. The didactic, paternalistic, authoritative, mystifying mantle has passed to the alternative therapist, and to wear it requires one thing most doctors are uncomfortable with, dishonesty.