Evidence that placebos could work even if you tell people they’re taking placebos | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine

In many medical studies, even people who take “fake” treatments, such as sugar pills with no active ingredients, can still feel better. These are the puzzling “placebo effects”. They are common, diverse and powerful and they raise an interesting ethical question – can doctors justifiably prescribe placebos to their patients? The standard answer is no. Doing so patronises the patient, undermines their trust, and violates the principles of informed consent. It compromises the relationship between doctor and patient. At worst, it could do harm.

But many of these arguments are based on the idea that placebo effects depend on belief; people must expect that treatments will work in order to experience any benefits. For a doctor to prescribe a placebo, they’d need to deceive. But according to Ted Kaptchuk from Harvard Medical School, deception may not be necessary. In a clinical trial, he found that patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) felt that their symptoms improved when they took placebo pills, even if they were told that the pills were inactive.

Fabrizio Benedetti, a placebo researcher at Turin Medical School who wasn’t involved in the study, says, “Although several studies suggested that placebos can be equally effective without deception, this is the first rigorous study that provides scientific evidence for this.”

Referring to an earlier study published in the British Medical Journal, he says, “We did the study because we knew that physicians were giving placebo to patients secretly without informed consent. Our study was designed to test whether placebo effects could be harnessed without this secret deception.”

via blogs.discovermagazine.com

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