I’ve always been told about the power of positive thinking. Normally a tame issue, positive thinking becomes much more
controversial when you apply it to medical issues, in the form of placebos. The
commonly cited downside of using placebos is that you could be putting the
patient at risk by not providing the highest quality of treatment. But how do
the ethical implications change when placebos are found to perform equally
well? A recent study showed that the placebo pills performed equally well as
amoxicillin, a commonly used antibiotic. If they are equally effective, then
how do we market said placebo to the public. If we charge nothing for the
placebo, then no one will pay for the antibiotic. However, If no one pays for
the antibiotic, then everyone will know that they have a placebo, and it will
most likely not work as well. Another strategy is to charge them for the
antibiotic and then give them what may or may not be a placebo, but this is no
different from just administering antibiotics. One option is to offer a reduced
price for what will be a placebo only a certain percentage of the time. But how
do we regulate this percentage? We need some form of standardization for the
amount of antibiotics used so that people still hold faith in the placebos, but
also can buy at the lowest possible price. There’s no easy solution, but we
must institute some sort of control to lower marginal cost of treating patients.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/health/research/in-sinusitis-antibiotics-are-as-effective-as-placebos-study-finds.html
1 comment:
I am curious about this placebo effect in the case of this particular antibiotic. I know that amoxicillin is a very wildly used drug and can treat many different illnesses. I very much doubt that the placebo effect is as strong as the antibiotic in all scenarios, and I suspect the areas in which it is as effective are akin to acne treatment. If this is the case then I do not believe that the issues brought by providing a placebo or the real thing arise, because for most instances the placebo would not be equivalent. However, if this is not the case, is it possible that having a significant percentage of the pills be placebo may actually reduce the placebo effect. If you knew when you bought medication that there was a good chance that it would not work, would you not be tempted to doubt it, and thus ruin the effect. I think that it is possible that the only way that this could be effective is if we were never told that there were placebo pills. That being said I think the placebo effect is extremely interesting and warrants more research.
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