What if placebos are actually effective?

Should we make use of them outside of experiments?

Or would using fake treatments be unscientific and unethical?

But wouldn't the really unscientific thing be to rule out the possibility of using a remedy that has been empirically shown to work? And wouldn't the really unethical thing be to withhold a remedy that could help people?

Also, isn't it begging the question to say we shouldn't use them because they're "fake"? If they became widely accepted, wouldn't they be "real" by definition?

I also wonder if objections to placebos are based on a gut feeling that a remedy that operates psychologically is somehow less valid than one that operates physically. This distinction itself would seem to be unscientific, since the enlightened view is supposed to be that what happens in the mind is actually physical (specifically, brain states), right? But even if you're a dualist and don't equate the mind with the body, I still don't know why we should privilege the physical over the mental.