Passage Summary: Even though fake pills can help people recover, an ethicist argues they are morally questionable because a doctor's reasons for giving them might be less than ideal.

Conclusion: The practice of administering placebos is ethically suspect even if the patient receives a health benefit.

Reasoning: A doctor's motivation for prescribing a placebo might simply be to satisfy a patient's desire for action rather than a purely medical necessity.

Analysis: The ethicist is making a moral judgment based on a 'might'—specifically, the possibility that a doctor's motives are superficial. For this argument to work, the ethicist must assume that the doctor's underlying intent is actually relevant to the morality of the act. If the ethics of a treatment only depended on the outcome (the patient getting better), the doctor's motive wouldn't matter. Look for an assumption that connects the doctor's motivation to the ethical status of the treatment.