Doctors Regularly Prescribe Placebos

Oct. 24, 2008— -- When you visit the doctor's office with a cold or other illness, you may leave with a prescription that does more for your peace of mind than it does for your actual ailment.

According to a new study published in the British Medical Journal, U.S. doctors regularly give placebo treatments such as vitamins, sedatives or even antibiotics to patients, even though in many cases these doctors don't expect such treatments to help the patient's underlying disease.

In a survey of 679 general internal medicine physicians and rheumatologists, researchers from the National Institutes of Health found that about half of the doctors admitted to prescribing placebo treatments without informing the patient.

Moreover, most of the doctors, 62 percent, believed that the practice of giving a patient a placebo without their knowledge is ethically sound.

According to lead study author Dr. John Tilburt, staff scientist at the NIH and assistant professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., this data reflects how the industrial model of healthcare promotes the mentality that for every symptom you may experience, there's a pill to make it all better.

"I think it's a deep-seated impulse in doctors today to promote positive expectations even through a psychological mechanism," Tilburt explained. "Doctors feel pressured to prescribe something in order to show the patient that they are taking their symptoms seriously and trying to do something about it, so they try to find creative ways to make patients feel better, and will use any tool available, including psychological benefits."

Still, many criticize the use of placebo treatments because they believe that the practice is dishonest.

"I would hope that physicians were not using deceptive tactics to treat their patients," said Dr. Ted Palen, an internist at the Colorado Permanente Medical Group in Denver, Colo. "I believe prescribing a placebo, without informing the patient of what your intent is, involves deception and therefore violates patients' autonomy and informed consent."