Voices
Jane’s “miracle cure” is widely
referred to as the “placebo effect.”
Placebos are generally inert substances, like sugar pills, thought to
relieve patient symptoms through
an expectation of getting better. It
seems that, in some reported cases,
simply the act of taking medicine
or believing that medicine might
work can impact patient outcomes.
Because of this, placebo effects have
historically been discounted as effects that aren’t medically “real.”
But what if placebos and their
effects were not as “inert” as we
once thought, that they might really
provide therapeutic benefit? This
raises a new ethical question: Are
we harming patients by withholding treatments like placebo therapy
that might actually help them?
Some patients and physicians
frown upon placebo use primarily
because placebo effects are thought
to require deception, that an “unreal” treatment will give “real” relief,
and therefore their use