Utilitarianism: Placebo-Controlled Trial
In terms of utilitarianism, actions are evaluated by the outcome. What we should do is to maximize the good outcomes and minimize the bad outcomes. The most promising way of reaching the final decision is to choose the one that would bring about the greatest net benefits to everyone affected by the action once the harms had been taken into account.
In this specific scenarios, if we aim to use utilitarianism to identify whether we should include placebo-controlled trial in this specific situation, we should analyze this problem in three steps. (1) List out the various options that we could perform to arrive at the final purpose.
(2) Determine all the foreseeable benefits and harms that could result from each action for everyone that could be affected by the action. Cost-benefit evaluation might help in …show more content…
2) It cost less. Trials using placebo as controls allow rigorous testing with less cost than trials using standard treatment, which leads to the fact that fewer research participants are exposed to the new treatment having the potential for toxic or ineffective result [ ]. 3) From statistical point of view, placebo controlled trials lead faster to statistically predictive results, implying that it is more easily to arrive at a positive result [39], which might be a priority for the drug companies. However, the drawbacks for using placebo as controls include: 1) There are uncertainties for the controlled group who took placebos. It is difficult to predict whether there might occur some adverse outcome due to non-treatment strategy [ ]. Extremely case is that placebo can cause death sometimes. 2) Sometimes the effect of the new drug can only be detected by using the placebo conditions, however in this situation it is hard to decide that whether there is a real existing effect, especially in the case that the difference between two
In this specific scenarios, if we aim to use utilitarianism to identify whether we should include placebo-controlled trial in this specific situation, we should analyze this problem in three steps. (1) List out the various options that we could perform to arrive at the final purpose.
(2) Determine all the foreseeable benefits and harms that could result from each action for everyone that could be affected by the action. Cost-benefit evaluation might help in …show more content…
2) It cost less. Trials using placebo as controls allow rigorous testing with less cost than trials using standard treatment, which leads to the fact that fewer research participants are exposed to the new treatment having the potential for toxic or ineffective result [ ]. 3) From statistical point of view, placebo controlled trials lead faster to statistically predictive results, implying that it is more easily to arrive at a positive result [39], which might be a priority for the drug companies. However, the drawbacks for using placebo as controls include: 1) There are uncertainties for the controlled group who took placebos. It is difficult to predict whether there might occur some adverse outcome due to non-treatment strategy [ ]. Extremely case is that placebo can cause death sometimes. 2) Sometimes the effect of the new drug can only be detected by using the placebo conditions, however in this situation it is hard to decide that whether there is a real existing effect, especially in the case that the difference between two