Ernst on sCAM's Placebo Sham

here, some writing on how placebo is not a selling point for sCAM:

001. at life.spectator.uk, Professor Edzard Ernst writes in "Does the ‘Placebo Effect’ Justify the Use of Alternative Medicine?" (2019):

" placebo effects may be real, but, as a justification for so-called alternative medicines, they are hopeless [...] placebos never cure any disease [...] many studies show that the apparent benefit SCAMs rely heavily, if not entirely, on the placebo effect [...] unable to produce convincing evidence that their treatment is effective beyond a placebo effect, many SCAM practitioners now admit that their therapies work mostly or entirely via a placebo effect [...] placebo effects are not ‘just in the mind’ of the patient; they are real and lead to quantifiable changes in our bodies. This is music to the ears of those who advocate the use of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) such as acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, reflexology or Reiki [...] crucially, they claim that such evidence proves that their SCAM is effective [...] all treatments, also of course conventional therapies that work beyond placebo, generate placebo effects when given with compassion, empathy and understanding. If a clinician administers an effective therapy (one that works beyond placebo), her patients benefit from the specific effect of this treatment plus from a placebo effect. If a clinician administers a SCAM that only works via a placebo effect, her patients lose out, as they cannot not benefit from arguably the more important part of any medical treatment: its specific effect";

interesting.