Count me a supporter of this idea. It’s an actual, marketed placebo - for kids, of course - called Obecalp (yes, that’s “placebo” spellt backward), marketed as a dietary supplement.
OK, I get it. There are potential problems. If a parent gives it to a kid in place of a real treatment, that’s technically a disservice. And it also undermines trust. Kids expect their parents to do right by them, and when they find out they’ve been taking sugar tablets rather than medicine, there might be issues. Worst of all, there’s the argument that this just primes kids to reach for a medical solution to every little ailment, contributing to the problem of overprescription of drugs.
Yeah, I get all that … but …
Well, put bluntly, there are people in the world who need placebos. They bring this sort of thing on themselves by constantly having all kinds of imaginary problems. This can become an unfair burden - financially as well as in time - on parents. Granted, there’s a line there, but I don’t have any particular problem with leaving it up to individual parents to decide where that line is. One potential benefit is that it gives parents a way to smoke out just how truthful their kids are being about being ill. If they start to suspect that a kid is lying about or otherwise exaggerating symptoms on a regular basis, they can test their theory with placebos. If nothing else, the placebos indicate a problem that needs to be treated psychologically rather than medically. And as for the argument that this encourages medicine dependence - I can also see the case for it having the opposite effect. Once a child learns that he has been successfully deceived a number of times, he might just draw the logical conclusion that the efficacy of medicine is largely in his head.
As for the ethical issues of parents lying to their kids - c’mon, this is as old as the hills. It’s not just Santa Claus, but God and Jesus too. Even parents who seriously believe in religion fudge about the particulars to get their children to behave, no? Or if not about religion, they make up fairy stories. The Germans have a standard book of stories just for the purpose of scaring kids into behaving, in fact. So what, really, is so innovative about lying to them about medicine? I’m all for it.