From the article: "For patients, however, the notion of genetic testing for placebo responsiveness might be less equivocal. Many people, notes Brown, “don’t be

From the article: "For patients, however, the notion of genetic testing for placebo responsiveness might be less equivocal. Many people, notes Brown, “don’t believe drugs are good for you. They believe in the power of self-healing.” And for at least some of them, the reality of self-healing might literally be a self-fulfilling prophecy." Doesn't it seem more likely that when placebo's work it's in situations where someone already had a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy which was making them (psychologically) ill? Their proposition seems to be that patients may be sick in the way it's ordinarily understood, but some are able to 'self-heal' themselves by believing they are receiving a legitimate cure. Sounds backwards. My understanding is this sort of scenario is common and well documented: a person believes there is something wrong with them, and subjectively it's the same as that thing actually being wrong with them; then they are given some treatment which they believe fixes what's wrong with them, and they feel better.