There is an argument that the placebo effect works because there is an evolutionary advantage in our ability to respond to treatment (no matter what), but I think that one thing worth considering is the fact that medication very often represents treatment by others.
Perhaps as social organisms our awareness of being valued by others is reason in itself to respond to placebos. This could be the case when we are provided with medication by another person (representing to us our value or worth to others) or in the case of an ill person with dependents, self administration would be symbolic of the dependents' need for the ill person. In either case the medication or treatment becomes a token of social status and worth.
By this reading the placebo effect could be explained as part of the same spectrum of phenomena that includes at one end very ill people's apparent capacity to live long enough to see important events in their lives (births, marriages etc.) and at the other end the clearly detrimental effects of treatments representing low worth (e.g. solitary confinement.)
Autism is (as I understand it) the inability to read social cues. If that is the case it may be worth investigating whether autistic people have a relatively diminished response to placebos...
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