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From: seifert@hammer.UUCP (Snoopy)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: Placebos can cause cancer (?!)
Message-ID: <1280@hammer.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 25-May-85 12:44:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: hammer.1280
Posted: Sat May 25 12:44:48 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Jun-85 03:09:57 EDT
References: <1589@aecom.UUCP> <1273@hammer.UUCP> <437@ttidcc.UUCP> <10970@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Reply-To: seifert@hammer.UUCP (Snoopy)
Distribution: na
Organization: The Daisy Hill Puppy Farm
Lines: 27
Summary: really allowing patients to die?

In article <10970@brl-tgr.ARPA> wmartin@brl-bmd.UUCP writes:
>A general query about controlled experiments, inspired by the subject
>discussion:
>
>If you are testing a truly effective medication, say for some serious
>disease or condition, and are conducting a blind or double-blind test
>where some participants get placebos and some the medication, and a
>number of the control group die because they got only placebos, while
>all the test subjects survive because this experimental medication was
>really effective, have you not violated the Hippocratic oath (and also
>laid yourself open for damages, no matter what you had the participants 
>sign), by denying this (admittedly experimental) medication to people
>who could possibly have been saved by it?
...
>I would think these considerations would make controlled testing
>for truly-life-saving treatments practically impossible to carry out.
>Am I right in this supposition?

There have been cases where the results were quite dramatic,
and the experiment cut short and the control group given the
experimental treatment.

Experiments don't have to give binary lived/died results to
be useful.

Snoopy
tektronix!mako!seifert