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Is It Ethical to Allow Individuals to Receive Placebo

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Submitted By hannahrules1995
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Is it ethical to allow individuals with the disease to receive a placebo when participating in a research study into Alzheimer’s disease?

Lit Review Dementia is an umbrella term or senility which means an enormous group of symptoms that are caused by disease that affect the brain, for instance Alzheimer’s disease. The brain starts to shrink because increasingly the cells die, which is known as brain atrophy (image below) which can sometimes be seen in a brain scan of someone in the later stages of dementia. When the cells die and it cannot be replaced at all.

What is Alzheimer’s disease?
The term Alzheimer is named after by Alois Alzheimer, who was a German psychiatrist and neuropathologist in 1906. Alois discovered the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) which is the most ordinary form of dementia that has no treatment, medication or cure at all. Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive disease, that the brain gets damaged gradually, as this happens the symptoms becomes more sever then eventually leads to death. It is a brain disorder that extremely disturbs a person’s knowledge to carry out daily activities. Throughout the course of the disease, protein, ‘plaques’ and ‘tangles’ develop in the structure of the brain, leading to the death of brain cells. People who have AD have a shortage of some beneficial chemicals in their brain, which are involved with the transmission of messages with the brain.

However, some drug may help keep symptoms from getting worse for a restricted time or there are some ways that can prevent this brain disorder such as anti-depressant as one of the ordinary symptoms of severe AD is depression. However, there are a few ineffective placebo-controlled trial has been attempted.

Placebo is a substance and designed to look like a real treatment, which is primarily used in medical context. It was discovered in 18th century. Generally,

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