Should Placebos Be Used In Medicine

The placebo effect has been affecting people for hundreds of years. In the 1940s sugar pills were sold in doctors’ catalogs specifically for the purpose of prescribing them to psychiatric patients. Today, over 60% of doctors admit to prescribing placebos to their patients, although there is an unwritten rule among doctors in the United States that placebos should no longer be given to patients. Some even do it on a regular basis because they believe the effect a fake drug has on the brain is more effective for its price than the real medication or treatment. In the documentary, Placebo: Cracking the Code, viewers see a few different perspective of the placebo effect. They hear from doctors, patients, and researchers to more fully understand the ins and outs of the placebo effect. These different viewpoints serve as an effective way to bring light the producers’ purpose: to show just helpful and sometimes harmful placebo drugs can be.

In Helen Pilcher’s article, “The New Witch Doctors: How Belief Can Kill,” she discusses the ethical dilemmas of the power of patients’ beliefs in the nocebo and placebo effects. The power of belief is so strong it can either make the patient feel better or become even sicker. This causes a problem for doctors because no matter how they state the truth it always ends up becoming a problem in the end.

Unlike conventional medication, the only part of the body affected during the placebo effect is the brain. (The mind and the body are connected and therefore ill people taking placebos often feel physically better). Typically, the person who is receiving the placebo from the doctor thinks he/she is getting real medicine. The client will go through the usual process of getting the treatment; seeing the reliable doctor, taking in medicine at specific times and amounts. All the normal rituals of treatments are preserved. The patient’s expectation of getting better while taking the placebo will be as high as when a real medicine is taken(H.K. Beecher 35% of 1082 patients) (A Comprehensive Review of the Placebo Effect: Recent Advances and Current Thought - Annual Review of Psychology). Numerous pieces of research have shown that people taking a placebo felt as good as people taking the actual medicine. Research is ongoing on how the placebo exactly works. “Indeed, there exists not a single but many placebo effects, with different mechanisms and in different

Proponents of placebo-prescribing argue that clinicians “can use non-deceptive means to promote a positive placebo response in their patients” (Brody, 1982, 112). However, some proponents also argue that

When you are deceived by someone, you are unable to govern yourself in the appropriate manner. Meaning that, your decisions and actions are altered because of the lack of truth involved. When someone lies, they are explicitly confirming something that is false. Placebos, which are inactive ingredients, are given to patient when physicians believe that the source of illness is not actually physical, but it is mental. Placebos violate both Mill and Kant ethical principles.

Placebos have been used in clinical trials since the eighteenth century but did not become a research topic until the late twentieth century (van Haselen, 2013). Most often when using placebos in clinical trials it is to determine whether or not the active agent has more effect on a patient than the placebo by providing each to the same number of recipients. The trials are almost always double blinded, this means that both person giving the drug and the person receiving it are unaware whether or not it is active so that good care and relationships must be present in the recipients at all times (Tavel, 2014). Ovosi, Ibrahim, & Bello-Ovosi (2017) declared “The choice between placebo and active controls in clinical trials affects the quality of the result as well as the ethical and scientific acceptability by both the public and regulatory bodies. It has, therefore, continued to generate discuss among researchers” (para. 3). This goes against the autonomy of a patient which is the right for a person to

Imagine going to the doctor and being given medication to heal your pain. Now how would you feel if after taking the medication and feeling better you came to find out you were given a placebo? This may sound upsetting to some, however, “ a recent survey of U.S. internists and rheumatologists found that some 50% regular prescribe placebos.” A placebo is defined as a false treatment without any significant chemical properties or active ingredient. The use of placebos as a primary form of treatment with any pathology is not happening anytime soon, but their positive impact and usefulness in the medical field is becoming hard to deny. In the article, “The Magic of the Placebo”, author David Bjerklie attempts to explain the growing change in

The study subjects were gathered from various ICU centers at various institutions, which is appropriate for study given the study objective and what the study was aiming to examine and determine (using a study drug vs. placebo in an ICU environment). Inclusion criteria were appropriate to assess the effects of the anti-pyretic acetaminophen due to their specificity of including those patients who were febrile with an infection that had been initiated with antimicrobial therapy. The exclusion criteria was extensive and included patient characteristics and disease states that may have skewed the true effect of acetaminophen. It was appropriate to limit these patients with the exclusion criteria from receiving treatment since their comorbidities

Since the beginning of the human race, stories are shared by voice and text. However, most controversy asks, “Should we tell the whole story?” Churches preach that it is sinful to lie even immoral. Opinions about this topic can be made, but telling the whole story, might affect ones medical treatment or a loved ones state of mind.

While noting that the ethical issue of deception exists, the significant benefits of placebos are revealed through studying some clinical cases and by determining the actual changes taking place in the brain and the body. Trust, found in the doctor-patient relationship, impacts the extent of the placebo effect. To possibly help solve the ethical issue of deception surrounding around the placebo effect, Kaptchuk points out that more research needs to be executed in order to carry out the placebo effect “with conformed consent” of the patient for the doctor to do what they believe is necessary for the patient’s well-being (9). This would eliminate the ethical issue of deception while still allowing “medicine’s goal to heal” to remain intact

to question whether it is ethical for clinicians to prescribe placebos as medication in clinical practice. Through defining placebo and placebo effect and determining whether placebos should be prescribed in clinical practice, I argue that in limited cases it is ethical for

Psychologists and doctors tend to be sold on the immediate effects of the drugs without much thought to the long term effects as most drug trials come to a conclusion after a certain period of time. The profits of pharmaceutical sales overshadow the actual health of the patients taking the medication. If the drug is not performing as advertised, then it is ineffective and should not be further produced. If the lack of efficacy is ignored then its is not possible for patients to trust doctors and pharmaceutical companies to determine what is best for

c) Classical conditioning could help patients reduce pain and anxiety through the use of placebos. For example the use of pills and injections that have no active ingredients or treatments that have no direct physical effect on the problem. The bigger and more impressive the placebos are, the stronger their psychological effects are.

The mind has often been referred to as the organ of consciousness. Daily functions such as thinking, breathing, and most any task we do rely heavily on use of this precious organ. However, through the use of placebos, it is becoming clear that the mind may have an even greater influence on our daily lives, influencing our perceptions of well- being. The placebo, which is Latin for to please, is a sugar-pill that is given under the guise of being a medication thought to treat an ailment. The use of placebos has shown us that the mind has tremendous potential to induce physiological changes in our body based solely on its perceptions. In example, as we swallow a sugar pill thinking

By examining some of the most popular, enduring alternative medical systems, one can begin to see some general trends of the systems, understand some recurring flaws, and understand the attraction and usefulness of alternative medicine in today's health care system. However, alternative medicine remains controversial. Whether it can be supported scientifically or not, alternative medicine may be useful to encourage both physical and mental well-being via a placebo effect. For this reason, alternative medicine must be considered by physicians as a complement to modern medicine.