Wow -- acupuncture is a proven treatment. It does not act on the basis of a placebo effect. There is science that supports it.
Did you know that they invented sham acupuncture, in order to compare it to real acupuncture? Sham acupuncture works just as real as the real thing.
Ever have acupuncture done? I have and believe me, it is anything but a placebo. It pinpoints pressure points that trigger nerves (don't quote me on this because I might not be totally accurate on how it works) but when I had it, I was in severe pain in my lower back, and voila when the needle hit the trigger point, I felt a split-second of very sharp pain, and then sudden total numbing of the pain. That is hardly a placebo effect.
That's a great description of how the placebo effect works.
Studies have shown that elderly patients with late stage cancer live longer than without treatment than those who have chemo. I'm talking late-stage cancer. I also saw an article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology when I was doing reports for the podcasts of a holistic cancer specialist, Bill Henderson, that stated chemo for terminal-stage, elderly patients was not recommended but that doctors did it anyway to give patients hope (and who knows what else, probably to add more money to their income). In my opinion, from what I learned I would avoid chemo at all costs. Of course, you have to weigh a lot of factors, especially the type of cancer, how aggressive it's spreading, etc.
That sounds believable, and unfortunate. I agree that treatments which shorten overall lifespan should not be engaged in.