The Continuing Unethical Use of Placebo Controls

Abstract

Is it ethical to use a placebo? The answer to this question will depend, I suggest, upon whether there is already available an orthodox treatment of proved or accepted value. If there is such an orthodox treatment the question will hardly arise, for the doctor will wish to know whether a new treatment is more, or less, effective than the old, not that it is more effective than nothing.-- A. Bradford Hill¹ Unaccountably, in these times of raised ethical consciousness, placebo treatments are still commonly used in medical research in circumstances in which their use is unethical. We refer . . .