Is Placebo a legitimate/moral form of treatment?

At a certain point, Placebo has been proven to work as a treatment for sicknesses, diseases, etc. For those who don't know, a placebo pill is a sugar pill in which the subject(person who is taking the medicine) thinks it is the actually treatment, so they are basically mentally tricked into thinking that this is helping there disease, and therefore the body actually does begin to heal. However, in certain test, if the placebo is proven insignificant or not working, the patient does not receive the proper real medicine, and therefore their medical problem gets worse (or at least it doesn't help).

So what I am asking is that is it moral to give a patient a sugar pill in certain situations as a treatment to a medical problem? Is it even moral to give these out in experiments?

 

If it works for the patient, and doesn't put them out financially. I see no moral issue with it, they're cured and not harmed in any way.

 

I believe it's a legitimate treatment in some cases (where there is no prolonging of illness). Let's say for example I have migraines from stress, and the doctor prescribes me a placebo pill. More than often the brain will subsidize the belief of a treatment, and in doing so decreasing the pain. As you know pain receptors are controlled by the brain, so if you can manipulate the brain, you can manipulate the pain. It's definitely not a moral form of treatment because it doesn't do anything.

 

If a placebo is sometimes ineffective, it is almost impossible to justify its use. Perhaps only in the case of a last resort or a minor illness; certainly not in more serious illnesses though.

 

Depends on the situation. If the illness is life threatening and a short term thing, then placebo shouldn't be used and proper medication should be given. I think it's a good first step when you're talking about mental illnesses such as depression and insomnia though.

 

Placebos are needed in things such as clinical trials. Studies and clinical trials are what help find cures, and patients who don't receive the testing medicine are contributing to the cure of their disease. Placebos allow for proper evaluation. In the long run, everything in a study contributes to helpful data, or to the later findings of helpful data. Yeah, once the patient finds out afterwards that they were receiving the placebo, they may be disappointed, but now the doctors testing them have a whole new set of data to adjust and advance with.

For life-threatening diseases, placebos are still needed and can help find a cure. Many diseases that don't have cures have clinical trials. You're voluntarily signing up for the trial, knowing you may receive a placebo--there's no way to know, it's completely random. Sometimes clinical trials are someone's last chance and trying effort. Would you be more interested in taking medicine you know will only help you temporarily, not do anything at all, or be a part of a trial that may be giving you a medicine that could cure you? If my disease was life-threatening, I'd prefer to be part of a clinical trial.

Placebos as a prescription from a doctor is still okay. Sometimes a placebo is all that is needed to make symptoms go away. Why prescribe drugs if it isn't necessary? The placebo effect is a wonderful thing in some cases. I'd totally be okay if my doctor prescribed me a placebo (obviously I wouldn't know at the time) if he thought it was the best next move. If the placebo doesn't work, the doctor is bound to take you off of it and take another approach. It's all trial and error either way. Sometimes drugs don't even help either.

 

Certain situations I think it's plausible. I think that in cases that deal with psychological issues such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc it is acceptable for things such as trial and error.

After that trial, and it was ineffective, give them a prescription to treat their diagnosis.

 

Surely it entirely depends on whether the placebo is used in the place of an actual cure or not?
If a proven cure exists, then surely it should be provided over a placebo?

However this viewpoint overlooks all financial considerations. If the patient is financially unable to acquire the actual cure - then the cheap placebo will be better than nothing?

 

We need to use them for double blind research so that we can known whether or not new medicine actually works. If there is already a drug out there they may use that instead of a placebo and if the drug quickly seems to be working very well they may switch everyone over to it but use different doses.

 

I think it is the strongest form of treatment.

 

obviously placebo treatment isn't going to work on someone who has a genuine, serious illness that requires proper medication, but in most cases were people complain about minor issues/abuse the health system (UK) It should be totally acceptable.