The Unanced Effect

Henry Beecher was a prominent Harvard anesthesiologist and public intellectual, known for exploits like discovering the placebo effect. He thought regulation would be devastating and had no proposal other than researchers should try to be good people - which everyone except him realized wasn't actionable. James Shannon ordered all federally funded research to submit itself to external audits by clinical review committees – ancestors of today's IRBs. In retrospect, bioethics derives from a religion that believes the material world is evil and death is the only escape. It cost us the opportunity to call the placebo effect the unanced effect.