Regulating the placebo effect in clinical practice

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 article 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 information, and may also be justified by therapeutic privilege. In addition, this reconceptualisation of the placebo effect offers a new justification for therapeutic privilege in these contexts. Notwithstanding this, using the placebo effect in clinical practice raises regulatory issues that will require special regulatory supervision.