Both my partner, Emily Rood and I are intrigued by the placebo effect in medicine, thus choosing to answer the following question as our topic: Is it permissible to prescribe placebos without the patient knowing? A placebo is a harmless medicine given to patients by their physician to mentally induce healing for the patient. The placebo is purely physiological because the patient believe that he/she is receiving a medicine to cure a discomfort, but the actual medicine doesn’t alleviate the discomfort, but rather the mental belief does. There are many ethical considerations concerning placebo. The main dilemma concerning placebo is that it violate the patient’s autonomy and informed consent, but giving the placebo effectively treat the discomfort,
