Many doctors give patients placebo treatment

[Birdbomb]

Many doctors give patients placebo treatment

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Many American doctors give their patients a placebo, usually a relatively innocuous drug such as a pain reliever, in the guise of medical treatment and view the practice as ethical, researchers said on Thursday.

Among 679 primary-care doctors and rheumatologists, who treat arthritis patients, about half reported prescribing placebos at least two to three times a month and most said they did not explicitly tell patients they were getting a placebo.

The idea may be to trigger the "placebo effect" -- a genuine improvement in health driven by psychological expectations of a benefit and not due to the physiological effect of a given treatment -- in cases in which normal treatment might not be warranted, the researchers said.

More than 60 percent of the doctors who answered the survey published in the British Medical Journal said that prescribing a placebo is ethically permissible.......
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GRRRR! This angers me in so many levels. A Rheumatologist prescribing placebos should be banned from practicing medicine due to the amount of suffering RA causes. Luckily, I have never had any doctor do this to me. It's always wise to read up on any medication your doctor prescribes. If you have doubts about your medications make sure to discuss this with your doctor

[Meetz1064]

What is wrong with these people? Do they think it's funny to treat other people like this?? Don't they understand what it means to live by the Golden Rule--treat others how YOU would like to be treated??

GRRRRR.

They make my skin crawl..........

[Cint]

I heard about that yesterday on the news and it angers me also!!

Don't you all wish the doctors could all be the patients and be treated as they treat their patients?


Cindy

[Nancy]

Oh - I don't know .... Please, let's be fair.

Sometimes if you kick a person very hard in their er, arh , hmm ... "bottom", it doesn't hurt too badly.

I'm perfectly willing to volunteer to kick these fine doctors very, very soundly in their bottoms (or fronts) and show them it doesn't always hurt like it should