Ethics of Medication-Free Research in Schizophrenia

Bola’s study highlights two important points about the ethics of medication-free research in early episode schizo-phrenia.1 First, the question of whether ‘‘biological tox-icity’ ’ results from short periods of medication-free research in early episode schizophrenia is an important, though very narrow, question in the debate over ethics of medication-free research in schizophrenia. Second, even on this narrow question, the paucity of good data is striking. Based on a meta-analysis of 623 participants in 4 ran-domizedcontrolled trials and3quasi-experimental studies otherwise meeting his selection criteria for study inclu-sion, Bola concludes that ‘‘in the absence of substantive evidence of long-term harm from short periods of medication-free research in schizophrenia, a categorica