Because prescribing a placebo while saying it's a medicine involves lying to the patient, which is controversial when ethical standards usually involve informed

Because prescribing a placebo while saying it's a medicine involves lying to the patient, which is controversial when ethical standards usually involve informed consent and a belief in patient autonomy. > I just can’t fathom that the entire scientific community just went “ah, hm, right, placebo. I see. I guess we need to do our random-controlled-trials with a placebo control group now”. Wait, that’s it? see that's because they didn't go like that - there's even an section on the ethics of using them in medical practice on the wikipedia article for placebo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#In_medical_practice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#In_medical_practice Plus it's a pretty important topic of discussion when it comes to pain management/opiod crisis. Unsurprisingly, a large group of professionals did not, in fact, randomly decide to ignore a very large and obvious question in the field