What you don’t know can help you: The ethics of placebo treatment

Journal of Applied Philosophy

Volumn 28, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 188-202

  Groll, Daniel ^a  

^a CARLETON COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 82455234704     PISSN: 02643758     EISSN: 14685930     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5930.2011.00517.x     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. For discussion of this topic see R. J. Connelly, ‘Deception and the placebo effect’, IRB: Ethics and Human Research 9 (1987): 5–7
2. A. Cahana & S. Romagnioli, ‘Not all placebos are the same: A debate on the ethics of placebo use in clinical trials versus clinical practice’, Journal of Anesthesia 21 (2007): 102–105
3. A.K. Shapiro & E. Shapiro, The Powerful Placebo: From Ancient Priest to Modern Physician (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
4. F. Miller & S. Horng. ‘Is placebo surgery unethical?’, New England Journal of Medicine 347 (2002), 137–9.
5. For an account of this kind of motivation in a clinical setting see, E. A. Fox, ‘Confronting the use of placebos for pain’, The American Journal of Nursing 94 (1994): 42–46.
6. For a dissenting opinion see A. Hrobjartsson & P. C. Gotzsche, ‘Is the placebo powerless? An alaysis of clinical trials comparing placebo treatment with no treatment’, New England Journal of Medicine 344 (2001): 1594–1602
7. For a response to this paper, see F. G. Miller & D. L. Rosenstein, ‘The nature and power of the placebo effect’, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 59 (2006): 331–335.
8. H. Brody, ‘Placebo’ in Warren T. Reich (ed.) Encyclopedia of Bioethics (London: Simon & Schuster MacMillan, 1995) pp. 1951–1953.
9. National Institutes of Health, The Placebo Effect in Clinical Practice, 2001, http://grants.nih.gov/grants/ guide/rfa-files/RFA-AT-02-001.html
10. M. Talbot, ‘The placebo prescription’, The NewYork Times Magazine 9 (2000), 34–39.
11. P. Lichtenberg, U. Nitzan & U. Heresco-Levy, ‘The ethics of the placebo in clinical practice’, Journal of Medical Ethics 30 (2004): 551–554.
12. T. Nordenberg, ‘The healing power of placebos’, FDA Consumer Magazine 34 (US Government Printing Office, 2000).
13. D. D. Price & H. L. Fields, ‘The contribution of desire and expectation to placebo analgesia: Implications for new research strategies’ in A. Harrington (ed.) The Placebo Effect (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 117–137.
14. For an interesting discussion of the rise of the concept of autonomy in bioethics see, J. E. Smith, ‘The pre-eminence of autonomy in bioethics’, in D. S. Oderberg & J. A. Laing (eds) Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics (NewYork: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 182–195.