INDIFFERENCE OF SUBJECTS: AN ALTERNATIVE TO EQUIPOISE IN RANDOMIZED CLINICAL TRIALS

• Published in: Social philosophy & policy Vol. 19; no. 2; pp. 295 - 323
• Main Author: Veatch, Robert M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.07.2002
• Subjects: Apathy; Bioethics; Choice Behavior; Clinical interviews; Clinical research; Clinical standards; Clinical trials; Coercion; Conscience; Consensus; Decision Making; Disclosure - ethics; Doctors; Ethics; Ethics, Research; Experiments; Hippocratic oath; Humans; Informed Consent - ethics; Medical ethics; Medical treatment; Medicine; Participants; Patient Participation; Patient Selection; Patients; Patients - psychology; Personal Autonomy; Philosophy, Medical; Physicians; Physicians - psychology; Placebo effect; Placebos; Policy studies; Randomized controlled trials; Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic - ethics; Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic - standards; Research Design; Research Personnel - psychology; Research Subjects - psychology; Risk Assessment; Social policy; Terminology as Topic; Therapy; Treatment Outcome; Uncertainty; Analytical Approach; Biomedical and Behavioral Research
• ISSN: 0265-0525; 1471-6437
• DOI: 10.1017/S0265052502192120

The physician who upholds the Hippocratic oath is supposed to be loyal to his or her patients. This requires choosing only the therapy that the physician believes is best for the patient. However, knowing what is best requires randomized clinical trials. Thus, clinicians must be willing to recruit their patients to be assigned at random to one of two therapies (or perhaps to a therapy or a placebo) in order to determine which is best based on the highest standards of pharmacological science.