The Use Of Placebos And Its Effects On The Treatment Of Many Disorders ( Stang )

The placebo effect occurs when a person is treated using a fake (inactive) substance that looks like an ordinary medicine, the patient is generally unaware that the substance is inactive. It is the patient’s expectation to feel better, which seems to play a major role in the way the patient actually feels. However a placebo will not cure an illness. The placebo effect has been used in clinical trials to test the effectiveness of new drugs. Some

Misconception with equipoise will make the barrier between therapeutic and research null. Its goal in producing reliable and generalizable knowledge is coiled in with ethical difficulty. That’s why on an ethical standpoint, benefiting a collective group needs to be weighed with the rights of the participant patients in the clinical research. However, the goal of equipoise is beneficial since its main priority is extracting epistemic information from the randomized clinical trials. The useful information is needed since equipoise follows the principle of having “a state of genuine uncertainty.” This affects both theoretical and clinical. So, trials that are redundant can be marked out by taking equipoise into account since the trials have already been run where there is already certainty of the outcome. So, to detail what equipoise allows underneath the principle of “non-exploitation” is that there will be no exploitation of participants or patients with a needless trial that holds no useful outcome. Equipoise becomes a necessary condition in order for a trial to become ethical since trials must be reviewed to be deemed of value. But, there’s an underlying factor that equipoise’s uncertainty trials do not bring about and that is the health of the patients. Participant patients will undergo trials of uncertainty so there is a possibility that the patient may be harmed during the process. If the trial proceeds, then the health of the patients will be even more at risk, disregarded and exploited in order to grasp epistemic information. The moral principles between medical therapy and those that guide clinical research is different. Though, equipoise is valuable in a collective sense – it is exploitative of participant patients by failing to consider the balance with the subject and societal

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

Additionally human medical research studies often targeted those who came to public teaching institutions desperately seeking free medical treatment and who generally looked up to doctors and experimenters as experts in the field who were there to help them. While this motivation may seem logical, it is often faulty as many human medical research studies throughout history demonstrate that the motivation of medical researches is often not the care of those currently suffering from a particular condition but the future returns on the cures or medical treatments that may be discovered during the study (McKie). As with many such unethical studies, the participants often do not give consent and are not informed of known dangers to the procedure, medications or lack of treatment. The use of individuals who are poor, uneducated, and lack medical insurance in combination with prestigious university research institutions and the white coated, well-educated researchers motivated by discoveries of cures on the scientific frontier results in abuses of individuals.

The placebo effect, prescribing placebos and the use of placebos in clinical trials all are examples of why placebos are an ethical issue. The reason it is an ethical issue is because the physicians, for the most part, are giving patients inert substances and telling them it is going to make them feel better. This can be perceived as lying and deception by certain people even though the intent is to help people have positive effects when there are not many other options without the use of drugs. The nocebo and placebo can also be considered reasons for the placebo to be an ethical issue since they do not always have a positive effect on patients. This is due to the continuous lack of knowledge one has on how exactly placebos affect the brain. Placebos being an ethical issue is because many physicians and patients have different thoughts on whether or not a placebo should be used in certain

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 first article is entitled “of mice but not men: problems of randomized clinical trials,” is written by Samuel Hellman and Deborah S. Hellman discusses the issues of randomized medical testing and experiments on patients. The article describes the role of the personal physician and how the physician can take an ethical or unethical path of treating his/her patients. The relationship between the patient and physician is greatly emphasized because according to the article trust is very valuable in medicine especially when a patient’s life is at risk. A Kantian and a Utilitarian view of randomized clinical trials are debated but the authors clearly steers towards a Kantian point of view.

The trial I chose to explore for this discussion is the Risperidone Trials that occurred in India. For this trial, psychiatric patients were lied to by being told that their specific anti-psychotic drugs were no longer available, and then were given a drug called risperidone or just a placebo (SOMO Briefing Paper, 2008). This was unethical because the patients were lied to and informed consent was not obtained from the individuals who participated in this clinical trial. All of the participants receiving the placebo were unaware that they were not being provided legitimate anti-psychotic medications. Providing placebos instead of medications to these individuals was a dangerous decision, especially since these individuals depended on these drugs in order to maintain a semblance of sanity. An ethical principle that this violates is known as beneficence, which is the idea that if we can, we ought to do good (or what is right) in any given

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

The placebo (pla-see-bow) effect is the act of making things appear like they work like they're said to. Researchers use the placebo effect when testing out new medications and their effectiveness by telling everyone they're getting the same medicine, and giving a certain amount of people a fake treatment to test and others getting the real deal, neither parties knowing a difference. The placebo effect occurs when people's expectations or beliefs influence or determine their experience in a given situation (P.54 OpenStax). Some people's mind will make them believe that the fake treatment is working for them, when in actuality it is not. Before the experiment, the control group should tell everyone the medicine they're all said to be getting

Medicine has always been a helpful tool for mankind when facing troubles such as epidemics and illness; hand-to-hand with scientific research, the field is in constant change and new innovations are being made every day. Nevertheless, it has also been target of multiple criticisms and controversies in terms of ethics, with topics like animal experimentation or assisted death.

There has been knowledge of a placebo trail that dates back to 1784, the first trial was under the direction of Benjamin Franklin. Also, it has been said that during the Second World War, Henry Beecher a medic met with two hundred seriously injured soldiers, still able to talk. Beecher offered each soldier morphine and they refused, because they were simply happy to be alive. Afterwards Beecher remembered that before the war he experienced patients with similar injuries that begged for morphine and healthy soldiers complained about minor pain. He concluded that the difference had to do with emotions and expectations of the soldiers as to how they would heal. I believe the placebo effect produces positive results ultimately based on the patient’s individual beliefs, emotions and expectations during the time of their illness. Furthermore, positive thinking is a mental attitude that is usually referred to as optimism. It has been suggested that optimism could appear to be a hereditary trait because it is actually a manifestation of combined traits that are

One of the accepted ethical standards for clinical trials is that a placebo control should only be used when there is no know effective treatment. Why should this be?

The majority of the people in the group with valid medicine were healed. Surprisingly, around 379 people were cured by the placebo effect alone (Beecher). There is a distinct difference between the effects of medicine given to you by certified doctors and medicine given to you by your co-workers. Extravagant credentials at the beginning of a name or a convincing advertisement of a pill is all it takes for the placebo effect to break through our defenses.