Problem
The placebo effect is one of the most powerful and unsettling phenomena in medicine, and it's fundamentally about perception. By definition, a placebo is a drug (or other treatment) that has psychological and physical effects even though it's technically inert. So, for instance, if you have a headache and I give you a pill without any drugs in it, you might start to feel better even though the pill didn't do anything for you.
Now, it's one thing to give people sugar pills for a headache. It turns out, though, that surgery can have a placebo effect as well. Hundreds of thousands of people have undergone arthroscopic knee surgery for knee pain...but it turns out that fake surgery might work just as well. So, for Tuesday the 4th, please read this article: "Surgery Is One Hell Of A Placebo" By Christie Aschwanden and this article: "Surgery for Placebo Effect? Commentary 2" by Matthew J. Matava and Charles Carroll and let everyone know what you think. Surgery, anesthesia, etc., are not without risks. Is fake surgery immoral? Should people be told that they're undergoing a fake operation? Are fake pills OK? Should insurance pay for all this?