Abstract
It has been presumed within bioethics that the benefits and risks of treatments can be assessed independently of information disclosure to patients as part of the informed consent process. Research on placebo and nocebo effects indicates that this is not true for symptomatic treatments. The benefits and risks that patients experience from symptomatic treatments can be shaped powerfully by information about these treatments provided by clinicians. In this paper we discuss the implications of placebo and nocebo research for risk–benefit assessment and informed consent.
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Notes
An argument providing detailed support for this interpretation has been developed elsewhere; see [17].
For the sake of this analysis, the risks of vertebroplasty are intentionally left out of this hypothetical account of information disclosure.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Annette Rid, Reidar Lie, and Alan Wertheimer for helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper. This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the Clinical Center, NIH and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
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Miller, F.G., Colloca, L. The placebo phenomenon and medical ethics: Rethinking the relationship between informed consent and risk–benefit assessment. Theor Med Bioeth 32, 229–243 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-011-9179-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-011-9179-8