Doctors Often Prescribe Placebo Treatments

"The cornerstone of what treatment is acceptable is full disclosure for the patient," Leuchter said. "If you explain to the patient what you are doing, and why you are doing it, that is right. If you mislead a patient, there is a serious problem with that."

The appropriate way to explain a placebo treatment, Leuchter added, is to say, "There is no reasonable medical evidence that this pill is effective for your condition, but some people who take this pill say it makes them feel better."

It is important to note that "deception is not a necessary part of the placebo effect," Spiegel said. "You can tell people that the treatment might benefit them, and that is not a lie."

And the placebo effect is often at work in medical practice, Spiegel noted. "A lot of factors go into the effect of therapy, some of which are specifically pharmaceutical, and some are not. You might feel better, because you feel you are doing something actively to treat the problem."

The argument about the ethics of placebo treatment can also be turned around, he added. "There are ways to present placebo treatment that do not involve deception," he said. "You are doing it because it can help a patient, and a certain percentage of patients will respond. Especially in conditions where we do not have a lot of treatments, is it ethical to withhold it?"

More information

The history of placebo treatments is described in the Skeptics Dictionary.

SOURCES: Farr A. Curlin, M.D., assistant professor, medicine, University of Chicago; David Spiegel, M.D., assistant chair, department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.; Andrew Leuchter, M.D., professor, psychiatry, and associate dean, School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles; Oct. 24, 2008,BMJ