Despite their widespread use, the specific efficacy of antidepressant medications has been a source of debate in recent years. Examination of the literature reveals that a significant proportion of the benefit produced in antidepressant trials is duplicated in pill placebo conditions. Furthermore, early trials utilizing active placebos, or medications that mimic the common side effects of antid...

Placebos are arguably the most commonly prescribed drug, across cultures and throughout history. Nevertheless, today many would consider their use in the clinic unethical, since placebo treatment involves deception and the violation of patients' autonomy. We examine the placebo's definition and its clinical efficacy from a biopsychosocial perspective, and argue that the intentional use of the p...

The 170-year-long debate in the medical literature about the ethics of prescribing placebos in medical therapeutics needs to be reevaluated in light of recent placebo research and improved understanding of the placebo effect as an integral part of the doctor-patient relationship. It has traditionally been assumed that deception is an indispensible component of successful placebo use. Therefore,...

Can the simple suggestion that you have consumed alcohol affect your memory for an event? Alcohol placebos affect social behaviors but not nonsocial ones, and have not previously been shown to affect memory. We investigated the effect of alcohol placebos using materials that revealed both the social and the nonsocial influences of memory Subjects drank plain tonic water, but half were told it w...

We provide a new perspective with which to understand what for a half century has been known as the "placebo effect." We argue that, as currently used, the concept includes much that has nothing to do with placebos, confusing the most interesting and important aspects of the phenomenon. We propose a new way to understand those aspects of medical care, plus a broad range of additional human expe...

Objective: To study the antiviral activity of lamivudine (3TC) plus zidovudine (ZDV), didanosine (ddI), or stavudine (d4T). Design: Randomized, placebo-controlled, partially double-blinded multicenter study. Setting: Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Units. Patients: Treatment-naive HIV-infected adults with 200–600 × 10 CD4 T lymphocytes/l. Interventions: Patients were openly randomized to a d4T or a ...

The American Society for Pain Management Nursing (ASPMN) holds the position that a placebo should not be used by any method to assess and/or manage an individual's pain regardless of their age or diagnosis. The only justifiable use of placebos is for participants enrolled in a blinded clinical trial. These clinical trials must be Institutional Review Board (or equivalent) approved with particip...

Can the simple suggestion that you have consumed alcohol affect your memory for an event? Alcohol placebos affect social behaviors but not nonsocial ones, and have not previously been shown to affect memory. We investigated the effect of alcohol placebos using materials that revealed both the social and the nonsocial influences of memory. Subjects drank plain tonic water, but half were told it ...