“Almost all UK GPs have at some point given a patient a treatment they don’t need. While few GPs gave sugar pills or saline injections (only 1% admitted to doing this on a regular basis), most had given what the paper called ‘impure placebos’. These they defined as treatments that can be effective in some instances, but not for the suspected condition or not at the dose prescribed. More interestingly, the survey also asked the doctors’ opinions on the ethicality of such treatment. Doctors seemed more comfortable ethically with prescribing impure placebos. However, more than 90% thought prescribing either pure or impure placebos was unacceptable.”
