The Ethics of Placebo Effects in Clinical Practice and Research

This chapter provides a synthetic overview of the contemporary debate over the ethics of placebos and placebo effects in both clinical and research contexts. Section 1 briefly reconstructs how ethical attitudes toward the use of placebos have changed during the last century following the emergence of autonomy in medical ethics. Next, 2 The Ethics of Deceptive Placebos, 3 The Ethics of Placebos Without Deception, 4 The Ethics of Modulating Placebo and Nocebo Effects Without Placebos chart the main ethical issues concerning the use of placebos in clinical settings, examining: the ethics of deceptive placebos; the ethics of placebos without deception; and the ethics of modulating placebo and nocebo effects without placebos. Finally, Section 5 outlines the role of placebos in research, discussing the ethics of placebos as controls in clinical experiments.