I find it difficult to support US without any evidence to back it up in human subjects. Animal studies are too far removed to be applicable. By just saying it seems to have beneficial effects in practice without actually knowing what it does is not justification in my view. Isn't willingly applying a modality based mostly on possible placebo effect or unknown effects unethical regardless of best intent for the patient? I will use this as an extreme example so bear with me: at one point thalidomide was deemed a reasonable treatment until the evidence clearly showed that it wasn't. This may be a bit of a stretch but what's to say that as technology improves we don't find that US may be somewhat deleterious to someone's health? My ultimate question is how it got approved for application to human patients without evidence to validate it?

I find it difficult to support US without any evidence to back it up in human subjects. Animal studies are too far removed to be applicable. By just saying it seems to have beneficial effects in practice without actually knowing what it does is not justification in my view. Isn't willingly applying a modality based mostly on possible placebo effect or unknown effects unethical regardless of best intent for the patient? I will use this as an extreme example so bear with me: at one point thalidomide was deemed a reasonable treatment until the evidence clearly showed that it wasn't. This may be a bit of a stretch but what's to say that as technology improves we don't find that US may be somewhat deleterious to someone's health? My ultimate question is how it got approved for application to human patients without evidence to validate it?