Louhiala Pekka, Hemilä Harri, Puustinen Raimo
Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 41, 00014, Helsinki, Finland,
Theor Med Bioeth. 2015 Aug;36(4):279-89. doi: 10.1007/s11017-015-9336-6.
Placebos are allegedly used widely in general practice. Surveys reporting high level usage, however, have combined two categories, 'pure' and 'impure' placebos. The wide use of placebos is explained by the high level usage of impure placebos. In contrast, the prevalence of the use of pure placebos has been low. Traditional pure placebos are clinically ineffective treatments, whereas impure placebos form an ambiguous group of diverse treatments that are not always ineffective. In this paper, we focus on the impure placebo concept and demonstrate problems related to it. We also show that the common examples of impure placebos are not meaningful from the point of view of clinical practice. We conclude that the impure placebo is a scientifically misleading concept and should not be used in scientific or medical literature. The issues behind the concept, however, deserve serious attention in future research.
据说安慰剂在普通医疗实践中被广泛使用。然而，报告显示高使用率的调查将“纯”安慰剂和“不纯”安慰剂这两类合并在一起了。不纯安慰剂的高使用率解释了安慰剂的广泛使用情况。相比之下，纯安慰剂的使用 prevalence 一直较低。传统的纯安慰剂是临床上无效的治疗方法，而不纯安慰剂则构成了一组模糊的多样化治疗方法，并非总是无效。在本文中，我们聚焦于不纯安慰剂的概念，并阐述与之相关的问题。我们还表明，从不纯安慰剂的常见例子来看，它们在临床实践中并无意义。我们得出结论，不纯安慰剂是一个在科学上具有误导性的概念，不应在科学或医学文献中使用。然而，该概念背后的问题在未来研究中值得认真关注。
