Placebo effect, Nocebo effect and their implications in Clinical Ethics

While conducting clinical trial, a large set of patients are invited who are administered the new medicine or on whom new treatment is carried on so as to check its efficiency. In doing so, they are divided into two groups- While one group is given the actual treatment in form of pill or any other treatment as such, the other is given not the actual treatment, but a “dummy” pill or injection. The reactions of the participants are very interesting, like some of them claim that they feel better despite of the fact that they were given dummy treatment and this is called placebo effect, wherein anything that seems to be a “real” medical treatment which in actual is not. The term placebo effect has got its name from the Latin phrase “placebo” meaning “I shall please.” There also exist another set of effect which has been observed in some of the participant, wherein they anticipate or feel adverse or negative about the treatment they received thus it can kick negative expectations in such level that can create experience of symptoms and eventually cause side effects in situation where none should occur. The term nocebo effect has got its name form a term meaning “I shall harm you”. According to various studies in our daily life placebos can impact on our daily conditions such as depression, pain, sleep disorders etc. It simply occurs due to a person’s expectations for example if a person expects a pill to do something, then a strong connection is created between the brain and body which cause effects similar to what a medication might have caused. It generally opined that placebo effect is not a conclusive proof about certain treatment since it can be difficult to distinguish from the actual effects of a real drug during a study. Talking about nocebo effect, it is believed that it might be powerful enough to kill anybody. And if the doctors try to avoid such sort of scenario by reframing his statements, using more of positive words then it would lead to ethical dilemma since the method adopted to decrease the patient’s discomfort could also be considered as depriving them of information about the procedure.