Abstract

In February 2010, the World Medical Association hosted an international symposium on the ethics of placebo controls in clinical trials (WMA 2010). Despite years of debate, ethicists, clinical trialists, and policy makers remain divided over the ethical acceptability of using placebos in research when a proven, effective treatment is available. The protracted nature of this problem is due, at least in part, to a perceived conflict between the opposing demands placed on clinical research by science and ethics. A good, scientifically valid trial, it is argued, must be “assay sensitive,” and without using a placebo control, there can be no guarantee that it is. In this article, we revisit some of the claims made about ..