Is it Illegal for Doctors to prescribe placebos? Are they still used?
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In general treatment, it is considered unethical and violates the practice of informed consent.
However, they are still used in clinical trials of medication...yet, the subjects do not know if they are getting the active or placebo...they, and the experimentors shoulded be "blinded" as to who get what. The subjects are informed that they might be given the placebo and thus have received informed consent.
Placebos are being used, with good success. It's the patient's belief in the efficacy of the drug that makes the treatment work.
In a sense, the patient is curing himself.
The mind is a very powerful thing.
They are perfectly legal, as long as your doctor isn't telling you it's an expensive drug and charging you the expensive drug's price.
There are a lot of people that they work on because their mind thinks that it is something that will work really well, so your brain releases appropriate chemicals to help out the supposed effect... and the chemicals alone help to do whatever the desired effect was supposed to be.
Ultimately, they won't work AS well as a drug or supplement would... but you won't get the side effects that a drug has. Most people get a much better effect from supplements because they have natural nutrients that actually nourish your system.
I don't see why it would be illegal. A lot of people out there are hypochondriacs. Doctors know that, so they prescribe placebos, instead of getting them hooked on a drug. I think it is a great idea! Imagine all those hypos on drugs! As long as they are not charging a TON of money for them, go ahead!
I'm unsure, but I don't beleive that it is. I can see why doctors would want to use them in certain cases, because of the beleif that the patient's illness isn't physiological, but more psychological. Some illnesses are in fact mental, and the patient's beleif in the drug alone is what causes them to recover. The only way that I could see it being illegal, is maybe if the doctor falsely told the patient that the drug was a name brand one for treating this illness, when it actually wasn't.
Don't take my word on this, though. I know that they use placebos for research purposes, but as far as prescribing them, I am still not 100 % sure. That's an interesting question, and I'll have to do some more research on it.
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