It seems that whenever a perfect placebo be permissible, that is what is being used rather than the current standard of care.
Soldiers can be sent to their death for oil and other resources that benefit the larger majority? but this is “yikes”?, not a phrase I find to occur in conjunction with rational decisions often.
It is. Control groups are no-treatment if no approved treatment exists, or current standard of care if there's an approved treatment. That's standard practice.
> It seems that whenever a perfect placebo be permissible, that is what is being used rather than the current standard of care.
If by "perfect placebo," you mean "no treatment," that's not correct, and is considered unethical.
I've read plenty of pharmaceutical trials where the control was a plain placebo, not the current standard of care, when it not involve a life threatening illness.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00061802
Clearly this antipsychotics trial does not evaluate the drug 's effectiveness against the current standard of care's, but against a placebo's.
> If by "perfect placebo," you mean "no treatment," that's not correct, and is considered unethical.
I mean giving them a drug that lacks an active ingredient but is otherwise not to the lay eye discriminatable from an effective drug.
And that is very much what is done in the case of the antipsychotics medicine I showed. So it's only unethical when human lives be at stake, apparently.
I see nothing wrong with sacrificing a few men, who consent and sign up and know the risk, for the far larger majority.
If better drugs can be developed that would serve millions by sacrificing a hundred consenting subjects that know they run this risk, that seems like an overall benefit to me.
It seems rather irrational to not be willing to do this. — It is fine if men die, so long as their blood not be on my hands directly, but only indirectly.