Ethics

Placebo Deception in USA Today

By Adam Kolber

Rita Rubin has written the cover story in today's USA Today "Life" section.  The article discusses physician use of placebos to treat patients.  I've blogged about the topic before, so I'll just tell you that it's a very interesting article.  And here's an excerpt from the article that describes some of what I argued in A Limited Defense of Clinical Placebo Deception:

"A placebo is a substance provided to a patient that the physician believes has no specific pharmacological effect upon the condition being treated," according to the AMA's 2-year-old policy. "In the clinical setting, the use of a placebo without the patient's knowledge may undermine trust, compromise the patient-physician relationship and result in medical harm to the patient."

Law professor Kolber says the AMA went too far. No cases of medical malpractice suits filed by patients who learned their doctors had deceived them by prescribing a placebo have been published, he says. But the AMA's ethics policy could change that: "The AMA may have just created liability for its doctors by creating this industry norm."

The article also talks about some bug bites I once received, but for that you'll have to go to the USA Today article yourself!

Full post as published by Neuroethics and Law on December 11, 2008 (boomark / email).