Many Doctors Admit to Treating Patients With Placebos
Columbus Dispatch
1/4/2008

Sometimes, doctors figure that their best shot at making patients feel better is to give them something that hasn't been proved to do any good, according to a study published in this week's Journal of General Internal Medicine. Placebos -- pills or other treatments with no known effects -- have been administered or prescribed by nearly half of internal-medicine doctors surveyed by researchers from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. The researchers sent a 16-question survey via the Web to the internal-medicine departments of three academic medical centers in Chicago and collected 231 anonymous responses; 45 percent said they'd used placebos. Dr. Amy Pope-Harman, who chairs Ohio State University Medical Center's ethics committee, said she was surprised, and troubled, by the results of the study. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at Ohio State, also expressed concern about the ethics of placebo use without explicit consent. However, she said, she doesn't doubt that placebos can produce beneficial effects.

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