Sins of Omission? The Non-Treatment of Controls in Clinical Trials

Abstract

When conducting clinical trials, Doctors sometimes withhold from controls treatment they believe to be probably beneficial, Even life-Saving. Utilitarian arguments for such behavior must be inadequate, Since they would equally justify administering, In a clinical trial, Treatment believed probably harmful, Even life-Threatening. It is argued that the acts-Omissions distinction lacks intrinsic moral significance and should not be invoked here. But a version of the pareto principle does reasonable justice to our intuitions about these cases.