The doctor-patient relationship is built on an implicit covenant of trust yet it was not until the post-World War Two era that respect for patient autonomy emerged as an article of mainstream medical ethics. Unlike their medical forebearers physicians today are expected to furnish patients with adequate information about diagnoses, prognoses and treatments. Against these dicta there has been ongoing debate over whether placebos pose a threat to patient autonomy. A key premise underlying medical ethics discussion is the notion that the placebo effect necessitates patient deception. Indeed, the American Medical Association guidelines imply that placebo treatment necessary entails a form of deception. As a consequence of this assumption, the fulcrum of debate on the use of placebo treatment has hinged on whether that deception is ever justified.. Recently performed experiments with open-label transparently prescribed placebos have begun to challenge the notion that deception is necessary in eliciting the placebo effect AND SUCH EFFECTS NECESSARILY INVOLVE A BINARY DISTIINCTION BETWEEN AUTONOMY AND BENEFICIENCE. In this paper we focus on the content of disclosures in distinctive open-label, transparently disclosed placebo studies and inquire whether they might be said to invoke deception in clinical contexts, and if so, whether the deception is unethical. We find that open placebos may be said to involve equivocation over how placebos work. However, drawing on surveys of patient attitudes we suggest that this equivocation appears to be acceptable to patients. We conclude that open placebos fulfil current American Medical Association guidelines for placebo use, and propose future research directions for harnessing the placebo effect ethically.

ObjectiveTo describe the opinions of British general practitioners regarding the potential of future technology to replace key tasks carried out in primary care.DesignCross sectional online survey.Participants1,474 registered GPs in the United Kingdom.Main outcome measuresInvestigators measured GPs’ opinions about the likelihood that future technology will be able to fully replace–not merely aid–the average GP in performing six primary care tasks; in addition, if GPs considered replacement for a particular task likely, the survey measured opinions about how many years from now this technological capacity might emerge.ResultsA total of 720 (49%) responded to the survey. Most GPs believed it unlikely that technology will ever be able to fully replace physicians when it comes to diagnosing patients (489, 68%), referring patients to other specialists (444, 61%), formulating personalized treatment plans (441, 61%), and delivering empathic care (680, 94%). GPs were not in agreement about prognostics: one in two participants (380, 53%) considered it likely that technology will be fully capable of replacing physicians in performing this task, nearly half (187, 49%) of whom believed that the technological capacity will arise in the next ten years. Against these findings, the majority of GPs (578, 80%) believed it likely that future technology will be able to fully replace humans to undertake documentation; among them 261 (79%) estimated that the technological wherewithal would emerge during the next ten years. In general, age and gender were not correlated with opinions; nor was reported burnout and job satisfaction or whether GPs worked full time or part time.ConclusionsThe majority of UK GPs in this survey were skeptical about the potential for future technology to perform most primary care tasks as well as or better than humans. However, respondents were optimistic that in the near future technology would have the capacity to fully replace GPs’ in undertaking administrative duties related to patient documentation.

The debate on the clinical, scientific as well as ethical implication of the placebo and its effects is important, but has mainly focused on placebos with a medicinal and somatic meaning, such as pharmaceutical, surgical, or so called alternative medicinal interventions. However, this perspective omits the role of placebo processes in interventions with a psychotherapeutic meaning, such as psychotherapy. Based on a theoretically derived differentiation of the placebo concept we argue that although it is difficult to prove that psychotherapy is verum, it is possible to use it as placebo and that it can best be described as either a superplacebo or a superverum. Because these conceptualizations of psychotherapy have ethical consequences, the nature of psychotherapy as anything other than a verum needs to be actively addressed by research and practice.