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Regulating The Placebo Effect In Clinical Practice, Tracey Chan
Regulating The Placebo Effect In Clinical Practice, Tracey Chan
Tracey E Chan
Recent research and ethical analysis have forced a clinical and ethical reappraisal of the utility of placebos in medical practice. The main concern of ethics and law is that using placebos in health care involves deception, which is antithetical to patient autonomy and trust in the physician-patient relationship. This paper reviews the various, more nuanced scientific conceptions of the placebo effect, and evaluates the ethical and legal objections to deploying placebos in clinical practice. It argues that the placebo effect may be legitimately accommodated on the basis that it does not engage the requirement for material or quasi-fiduciary disclosures of …
Informed Consent, Psychotropic Medications, And A Prescribing Physician's Duty To Disclose Safer Alternative Treatments, Rita F. Barnett
Informed Consent, Psychotropic Medications, And A Prescribing Physician's Duty To Disclose Safer Alternative Treatments, Rita F. Barnett
Rita Barnett-Rose
The use of psychotropic medication to treat any presumed mental health disorder always involves serious risks of harm. Accordingly, before prescribing psychotropic medication to control the behaviors associated with a presumed mental health disorder, prescribing physicians are required, under various medical ethical guidelines and informed consent laws, to first disclose information regarding available alternative treatment options, and the risks and benefits of such alternative treatment options. Indeed, because psychotropic medications are themselves experimental treatments due to the concededly unknown etiology of most mental health disorders, disclosing safer alternative treatments would seem to be a particularly critical aspect of a prescribing …