Placebos as Medicine: The Ethics of Homeopathy

[HuckleB]

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebos-as-medicine-the-ethics-of-homeopathy/

"Is it ever ethical to provide a placebo treatment? What about when that placebo is homeopathy? Last month I blogged about the frequency of placebo prescribing by physicians. I admitted my personal discomfort, stating I’d refuse to dispense any prescription that would require me to deceive the patient. The discussion continued in the comments, where opinions seemed to range from (I’m paraphrasing) “autonomy, shmatonomy, placebos works” to the more critical who likened placebo use to “treating adults like children.” Harriet Hall noted, “We should have rules but we should be willing to break them when it would be kinder to the patient, and would do no harm.” And on reflection, Harriet’s perspective was one that I could see myself accepting should I be in a situation like the one she described. It’s far easier to be dogmatic when you don’t have a patient standing in front of you. But the comments led me to consider possible situations where a placebo might actually be the most desirable treatment option. If I find some, should I be as dogmatic about homeopathy as I am about other placebos?

Nicely, Kevin Smith, writing in the journal Bioethics, examines the ethics of placebos, based on an analysis of homeopathy. Homeopathy is the ultimate placebo in routine use — most remedies contain only sugar and water, lacking a single molecule of any potentially medicinal ingredient. Smith’s paper, Against Homeopathy — A Utilitarian Perspective, is sadly behind a paywall. So I’ll try to summarize his analysis, and add my perspective as a health care worker who regularly encounters homeopathy.

...

So where does that leave us? Unfortunately we cannot simply sum up the arguments in a formula to give us the ethical answer. It seems clear that the ethical downsides to homeopathy outweigh its benefits under most circumstance I can envision. Smith uses the example of an ineffective defibrillator to point out that the use of such a device device in the context of medical care would be “morally unjustifiable.” He notes, "Because it is inherently ineffective, homeopathy cannot be ethically neutral. It follows that the purchase, deployment or promotion of homeopathy is morally unacceptable."

Perhaps there may yet emerge a framework where placebos can be ethically (and judiciously) justified. Homeopathy isn’t it. So what should health professionals do? For one, we should stop promoting homeopathy, and the sale of homeopathic remedies. We should advocate against the allocation of limited health resources to researching, facilitating or providing homeopathy. We should avoid giving homeopathy undeserved credibility by selling it alongside actual medicine, or allowing it to be sold without clear labelling that describes its lack of ingredients and effectiveness. And when we’re asked, we have an ethical responsibility to explain why we believe homeopathy is no ‘alternative” at all."


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It's a long piece, but it addressess this issue very well.

[ThatPoetGuy]

1. Homeopathy is bs, hokum, and nonsense.

It should be a simple thing to discredit it and convince people to look elsewhere for their treatment.

And yet the links you keep posting are so full of deceit, of conscious, deliberate deception, that even homeopathic fools are too wise to fall for their sleazy logic. A defibrillator that doesn't work? Please. Anyone who hears that knows it's an inaccurate comparison, and they know they're being lied to.

You know a thinker sucks when they can't even argue that 2 + 2 = 4 without including obvious distortions.

[HuckleB]

2. Thanks for continuing to offer nothing but ad hominem nonsense.

This piece is quite honest, and quite valid. Your supposed critique is quite ludicrous and pointless.