Half of U.S. doctors often prescribe placebos

This is very interesting and do the placebos cost as much? When filling a prescription, it would almost be difficult I might guess, but an injection given in the office could be easily enough done.

Why do we have placebos anyway? For clinical trials I can see the point for clinical information and data, this is needed, but in the every day treatment of patients? Perhaps in some areas such as the psyche drugs this could be more appropriate. As a patient myself though, I would rather have the physician just say “no”, or tell me that my body needs to heal itself rather than take a pill that would be a sugar pill. The question with actual medications as placebos is a bit different though and I wouldn’t even know where to begin commenting there from a patient’s standpoint. BD

LONDON - About half of American doctors in a new survey say they regularly give patients placebo treatments — usually drugs or vitamins that won't really help their condition.

And many of these doctors are not honest with their patients about what they are doing, the survey found.

That contradicts advice from the American Medical Association, which recommends doctors use treatments with the full knowledge of their patients.

Most doctors used actual medicines as a placebo treatment: 41 percent used painkillers, 38 percent used vitamins, 13 percent used antibiotics, 13 percent used sedatives, 3 percent used saline injections, and 2 percent used sugar pills.

Brown said that while he hasn't prescribed sugar pills, he has given people with anxiety problems pills that had extremely low doses of medication. "The dose was so low that whatever effect the patients were getting was probably a placebo effect," he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27342269/