User:Kavigupta/Placebo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A placebo is a substance or treatment with no active therapeutic effect.[1] Common placebos include inert tablets (like sugar pills), inert injections (like saline), sham surgery,[2] and other procedures.[3]
![Thumb image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Cebocap.jpg/320px-Cebocap.jpg)
In drug testing and medical research, a placebo can be made to resemble an active medication or therapy so that it functions as a control; this is to prevent the recipient(s) and/or others from knowing (with their consent) whether a treatment is active or inactive, as expectations about efficacy can influence results.[4][5] This psychological phenomenon, in which the recipient perceives an improvement in condition due to personal expectations, rather than the treatment itself, is known as the placebo effect or placebo response.[6][7] Research about the effect is ongoing.[8]
A placebo may be given to a person in a clinical context in order to deceive the recipient into thinking that it is an active treatment. The use of placebos as treatment in clinical medicine is ethically problematic as it introduces deception and dishonesty into the doctor–patient relationship,[9] although there is some evidence that placebos presented as placebos can provide some of the same benefits without deception.[10]
The traditional view of placebo effects is that they are clinically powerful,[11] and are a result of the brain's role in physical health. The placebo effect is certainly a pervasive phenomenon;[12] in fact, it is part of the recorded response to any active medical intervention.[13] However, some recent research has called into question the extent to which the placebo effect results in genuine clinical outcomes and proposed that it is an artifact of the data collection process in double-blind trials.[14][15]