Good morning!
Thank you for a lot of thoughtful discussions this morning and I am trying classify them in my head. So please bear with me. It looks like (as some of you already pointed out), there are several issues to sham treatment, such as

1. Ethical issues related to Surgery
2. Ethical issues related to how informed are patients about "informed consent".
3. Emotional factors involved
4. Scientific rationale for doing sham surgery
5. FDA rules and regulations
6. Financial reasons

Obviously they are all tied together. But if we can come up with pros and cons for these points, we may come to some sort of an answer fo doing sham procedures. Thats my two cents worth on this topic!

Girija