I picked up my university's daily newspaper today and read an article about how half of American doctors in a new survey say they regularly give patients placebo treatments without telling them. I'm going to summarize the article since I can't find a link on the newspaper's website.
Researchers at the NIH sent surveys to a group of random internists and rheumatologists and received 679 responses. Of those doctors, 62% believe it is ethnically acceptable to give patients placebos. Now that part that applies to us: the article states that placebos are regularly given to patients suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome.
This really surprised me. I had no idea doctors regularly prescribe placebos (the article says that they aren't just sugar pills, they use vitamins or other kinds of pills that will not have any effect on the patient's illness) to their patients without informing them. Some doctors do tell their patients that they are giving them something without any medicine, and it has been proven to help people with their condition. However, many doctors do NOT tell their patients they are not receiving any medicine.
What I want to know is how can you tell you are being given a placebo? Unless you get your medication directly from the doctor you see, I don't understand how you can be told you are being given one thing and the pharmacy gives you something completely different.
Thoughts? Concerns? Opinions? Did anyone know about this?
ETA: There's a WebMD article
here explaining the research.