@JtP - We should be aspiring to better than placebo.
There appears to be a school of thought amongst some that the placebo effect is a powerful and legitimate therapy, one that is equally valid as medication, or perhaps an intervention - but for the most part it is not.It should be regarded as a baseline only, where there is no proven effective treatment.
There are certain areas in medicine where we have no adequate therapies as yet - chronic back pain, for instance. In circumstances like these, where the alternative therapies have no ill-effects, then you might as well prescribe them as anything else - This seems to be largely the basis by which acupuncture has come to be recognised by NICE as legitimate therapy for the NHS to prescribe.
Placebo is at its most effective when the patient is effectively deceived. Does not sit well to me with the Dr- Patient relationship that it should be founded in part on deception. Although interestingly, placebo has been demonstrated to work even when the patients have been told they are being given a pill or therapy with no active ingredient.
It is also worth noting that the more theatrical a placebo is, the more effective it often is. So sham acupuncture, with its theatre of needle placement etc. but no actual needling, has been demonstrated to be better than, say, the administration of a sugar pill.
People often talk about "mind over matter". That might work for pain and pain relief, but it is not going to make a cancer go away.