royalcrown
500+ Head-Fier
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Quote:
Giving patients a placebo while telling them it's morphine (and charging the same price as a morphine injection) is unethical in more ways than I can count.
That said, that study sounds very shady, especially if it was done by Chicago or NU, because morphine has been shown hundreds of times to have clinical efficacy above and beyond a placebo. Plus, FDA approval mandates a clinical double blind trial that proves its efficacy against a placebo. You might have a case for FDA approval being bunk if this was some new drug, but it's morphine. It's been used for years and years for its effectiveness in fighting pain.
Originally Posted by seacard /img/forum/go_quote.gif For example, Northwestern (or Chicago?) did a great study for people who underwent dental surgery. The patients were asked to rate how much pain they feel immediately after the procedure. Then, half got morphine, half got a placebo, and were again asked to rate their level pain. For those that got the placebo, their pain level went down about the same as for those that got morphine. In other words, even with a placebo, they felt less pain. Can you imagine somebody telling them that, no, you don't feel better? Their response, just like the response of somebody who buys Nordost cables, would be: "You're an idiot, I know how I feel and I am in a lot less pain. Maybe you have some kind of a defect or can't react to medicine, but this medicine makes me feel better." |
Giving patients a placebo while telling them it's morphine (and charging the same price as a morphine injection) is unethical in more ways than I can count.
That said, that study sounds very shady, especially if it was done by Chicago or NU, because morphine has been shown hundreds of times to have clinical efficacy above and beyond a placebo. Plus, FDA approval mandates a clinical double blind trial that proves its efficacy against a placebo. You might have a case for FDA approval being bunk if this was some new drug, but it's morphine. It's been used for years and years for its effectiveness in fighting pain.