A Physician Wants to Know Whether Acupuncture Is an Effective

A physician wants to know whether acupuncture is an effective treatment for chronic pain. She recruits a sample of patients who suffer from chronic shoulder pain and has each participant sign a statement of informed consent. Participants are then assigned randomly to an experimental group that receives weekly acupuncture treatments or to a control group that receives a weekly placebo treatment that is known to have no effect on pain. After four weeks, she finds that the participants in the experimental group report significantly less pain than do participants in the control group. Comment on the ethical acceptability of withholding the acupuncture treatment from the control group during this experiment. Is it OK or not? Explain why.