By AUDREY GRAYSON
ABC News Medical Unit
Oct. 24, 2008
When you visit the doctor's office with a cold or other illness, you may leave with a prescription that does more for your peace of mind than it does for your actual ailment.
According to a new study published in the British Medical Journal, U.S. doctors regularly give placebo treatments such as vitamins, sedatives or even antibiotics to patients, even though in many cases these doctors don't expect such treatments to help the patient's underlying disease.
In a survey of 679 general internal medicine physicians and rheumatologists, researchers from the National Institutes of Health found that about half of the doctors admitted to prescribing placebo treatments without informing the patient.
Moreover, most of the doctors, 62 percent, believed that the practice of giving a patient a placebo without their knowledge is ethically sound.
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