A placebo is a treatment designed to have no therapeutic effect. You cannot receive a placebo against your will. The only time a doctor prescribes a placebo for a patient is when the patient signs a consent to participate in a trial where some patients are expected to receive placebos.
Some clinical trials are so-called double-blind placebo-controlled studies. In these studies neither the patients nor the doctors know (“double-blind”) which patients are getting the new treatment (such as pills or intravenous medicine) and which patients are getting a blank (“placebo,” such as a sugar pill or intravenous saltwater). Studies are done this way in order that valid, reliable conclusions may be drawn.
If doctors or patients always knew who was getting the active treatment, they might be inclined to bias their reporting one way or another, even if they were trying to be objective. If treatments were not compared against placebos, you would never know whether an observed advantage was due to the treatment or to some other factor.
Each patient’s well-being always takes top priority, even in cases where placebos may be given. Some double-blind placebo-controlled studies are done with patients who are doing poorly and who have no known effective options left. For these patients the only choice is between doing nothing, and dying for sure, and participating in a clinical trial, and perhaps receiving a treatment that may have an effect on their cancer.
Even when patients are in an early-phase trial and the doctors do not expect them to receive any medical benefit from the low doses of the new treatment, the patients who participate in the study enjoy the benefit of feeling that they are contributing to the advancement of cancer care. Investigational therapy allows them to hope that they will respond despite expectations to the contrary. Nourishing hope and giving meaning to the illness are two vital benefits of clinical trials for these people.
Double-blind placebo-controlled trials are also done in patients who are doing well but have nothing available to help decrease the risk of recurrence or other future medical problems. In this situation the people who receive placebos are getting the same treatment (namely, nothing) they would get if they were not participating in the clinical trial.
*29/32/5*
