That's one of the most interesting points I've ever heard: It's unethical experitment on sick people due to placeobs. VERY interesting.

The only thing is, how else are you to do research on drugs if you're not able conduct those type of expiriements??? I've really been thinking about this, and it doesn't seem like there is any easy solution.

You could always expiriement on rats, but that will probably turn out to be fruitless, like you've pointed out in other posts...

The only other thing I could think of is to expiriment on people who are so sick, due to something like AIDS, and are near death no matter what you do -- then those people you could do the placebo thing. But that sounds just as unethical as the first scenirio if not more...

And in terms of something like bipolar where death is out of the question... then that really blows my mind.

Anyway, maybe in my total ignorance, I'm missing something really obvious...

And the only other thing I can think of, is these people are AGREEING to this expiriement. They're going along with this. So, if you sign a contract or whatever to participate in a study, even though you are completely aware that you may only have a 50% chance of recovering...then maybe it's fine.

But still, that point you brought up is down right irksome. Thinking of scientific research -- the only scientifc research we have -- as inhumane and unethical, is scary. Yuck, I don't want to think about it anymore.