German Medical Association recommends placebo use

Every second doctor in Germany has already given a placebo. In some cases, the German Medical Association recommends that medical professionals increasingly use prescription drugs.

02.03.2011

Every second physician freely admits that he has prescribed an ineffective remedy for a patient once before. This reports a recent study by the German Medical Association in Berlin. However, this fact as such is not a medical scandal, because placebos can actually have a healing effect. Therefore, the Doctors Association recommends physicians to increasingly resort to apparent remedies, purported therapeutic treatments and ineffective syringes. In several studies, a so-called placebo effect has already been proven. The positive thing about it, although the funds are free of medicinal ingredients, but no harmful side effects have to be feared. In addition, expenditures in the health system are reduced and nevertheless positive results can be achieved.

Studies prove the healing effects of sham aids
„Their use is of enormous importance for the medical practice“, said Prof. Dr. med. Christoph Fuchs, Managing Director of the German Medical Association (BÄK), presenting the opinion of the BÄK Scientific Advisory Board, which is now available in book form „Placebo in medicine“. Researchers can even detect the effects of pseudo-drugs in the brain. A large number of studies suggest that activation of the frontal lobes in particular can explain the effect of the effect. Prof. Dr. med. Robert Jütte, who is also director of the Institute of History of Medicine at the Robert Bosch Stiftung, emphasized that placebos played a central role not only in clinical research as a control group, but also in the effective treatment of disease. Thus, the means are not mere fancy, because clinically seen an effect is actually set in motion. To date, scientists have no comprehensible explanation for this effect. An assumption is that an effect depends on the expectation or the learning experience of the patient. Many people start from the circumstance, „when I take a remedy, the pain goes away too“. Or they have already had a positive experience and the organism now starts from a healing process and starts even immunizing or analgesic effects. The study author Jütte said that recent studies have even found that sham medicines even better chance of recovery, if the doctor treating the funds as „hochpreisig“ anpreist.

Placebo and ethical principle
Now, however, the question remains in which patient cases the use of a placebo complies with the ethical principles of medical treatment. Level that question the report wants „Placebo in medicine“ answer. An administration is not possible, for example, at the moment when a physician deprives his patient of a really effective drug or worsens by the administration of the dummy means the health of the patient. Also, a physician must always enlighten about possible risks and side effects. This is true even if the remedy is actually a dummy drug. But do the sham specimens still work if the patient was aware of this? Yes, says Jütte. Further studies have shown, according to the scientist, that placebos work even if the person concerned knows that the drug actually contains no active pharmaceutical ingredient. Because placebos work without deception.

The Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Medical Association, Prof. Dr. med. Peter Scriba, stated in the foreword to the publication that the study considered both areas of placebo use, clinical trials and therapeutic practice equally. Not only the ethical issues but also the lesser-known legal framework are discussed in detail. „This is particularly the case with regard to a special group, the non-consenting persons, which were hitherto unknown in the literature on placebo“, stressed Scriba. Overall, the use of placebos in medicine is certainly desirable. Because with „The use of placebos maximizes desirable drug effects, reduces adverse drug reactions and saves healthcare costs.“

88 percent of Bavarian doctors use sham medication
During the presentation of the new report in Berlin, the author referred to a survey among general practitioners in Bavaria. 88 percent of primary care physicians said they had already used a placebo. Around 72 percent of Swiss medicine colleagues said in a survey to use a placebo in everyday practice. Jütte concludes that in Germany „Over 50 percent of doctors use them in therapeutic practice“.

What is included in placebos?
In practice, mostly vitamin preparations or sham acupunctures are used. Other medics have one „alliance“ closed with pharmacists who then spend on recipe colorful sugar pills. Sometimes it happens that the doctor puts a syringe without active ingredients. In rare cases even so-called sham operations are undertaken. In other words, the surgery does not involve any medical intervention.

Deception or healing
But must patients now suspect that they are not taken seriously by their doctors or not treated properly? What initially feels like a deception, but helps in many cases. According to Prof. Jütte, fake medicines could be used, for example. In gastric ulcers gain a healing effect in 59 percent of cases. Even with mental disorders, very good results have already been observed. So placebos sometimes work just as well as strong psychotropic drugs, which sometimes have strong side effects. The expertise „Placebo in medicine“ (ISBN 978-3-7691-3491-9), published by the German Medical Association on the recommendation of its Scientific Advisory Board can be purchased from the German Doctors' Publishing House. (Sb)

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Placebos also work without deception

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