A brain network response to sham surgery

A brain network response to sham surgery.

Evaluation of potential therapies for neurological disease has been challenging due to beneficial responses in patients receiving the sham/placebo treatment. Placebo effects are especially prominent in Parkinson's disease (PD), which has become a useful model for studying the neurobiology of placebo responses. In this issue of the JCI, Ko and colleagues identify a neural circuit associated with...

Global Surgery Priorities: A Response to Recent Commentaries

Sham surgery controls are

Debate continues about the ethics of sham surgery controls. The most powerful argument for sham surgery controls is that rigorous experiments are needed to demonstrate safety and efficacy of surgical procedures. Without such experiments, there is danger of adopting worthless procedures in clinical practice. Opponents of sham surgery controls argue that sham surgery constitutes unacceptable viol...

Sham Surgery and Reasonable Risk

Sham Surgery and Reasonable Risks

O of the most fundamental tensions within clinical research arises from the need to balance the goal of advancing the frontiers of science in order to improve the standard of care available to future persons with the goal of responding with diligence and compassion to the important interests and health needs of the research participants who make such progress possible (Jonas 1969; see also Lond...