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I Need a Placebo like I Need a Hole in the Head

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Charles Weijer
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Extract

In this issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics Peter Clark provides a comprehensive and sound ethical analysis of clinical trials examining the treatment of advanced Parkinson's disease with fetal tissue transplantation. These studies raise profound questions about how clinical trials of surgical interventions ought to be conducted. At stake is not only the ethical basis of such trials, but differing views as to the proper role of science in medicine and its limitations.

Experience with the broader debate on the ethical permissibility of placebo controls has taught us that the choice of control treatment is an aspect of trial design in which ethical and scientific issues overlap. Accordingly, I will highlight, and perhaps expand upon, three issues raised by Clark: What scientific questions ought clinical trials of surgical interventions ask? How should the ethical analysis of risk for such trials be conceived? And, are surgical patients a vulnerable population?

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , Spring 2002 , pp. 69 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2002

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References

Clark, P.A., “Placebo Surgery for Parkinson's Disease: Do the Benefits Outweigh the Risks?,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 30, no. 1 (2002): 58–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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