[perrylaj]

I'm not sure how global the practice is, but at least in the US, you're briefed on the study as part of patient consent. They clearly tell you that nature of the study, including details about blinding, placebos that study participants may get instead of the active chemical, etc.

[akiselev]

Informed consent was codified into international law [1] in response to Nazi and Japanese human experiments. There's a few notable exceptions like China (signed but not ratified internally) and in some cultures it may not be emphasized enough to doctors in training but it's pretty universally understood in medical ethics that lying to patients is a line we should not cross.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civi...

[aidenn0]

That only requires consent, not informed consent. AFAIK, if someone consents to being experimented on, that law does not require you to fully inform them of the experiment, and certainly not to the degree that a typical IRB in the US requires.