Medicine's Greatest Mystery: The Placebo Effect
Mysteries of Science
Fun Kids
4.6 • 681 Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2021
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It sounds like magic – a pill that makes you feel better, even though it contains no medicine. Yet, strangely enough, fake drugs called placebos really do work. In this episode, Ciaran and Dan explore why the pills can fool us, and why we should be wary of their evil cousins, the nocebos.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Mysteries of Science. |
| 0:04.0 | My name's Dan and I'm the editor of Science and Nature, the monthly magazine from the team behind the Week Junior. |
| 0:10.0 | And I'm Kearen the Features Editor. |
| 0:12.0 | In each issue of Science and Nature we explore the universe through in-depth features, new stories, or inspiring images, interviews with top experts, and much more. As ever on the |
| 0:22.5 | podcast, this week we're going to be tearing open one of our favourite mysteries of science. |
| 0:28.5 | These are the strange phenomena and bizarre events that have left scientists scratching their |
| 0:33.6 | heads and despite all of their best attempts attempts they remain well and truly unsolved. |
| 0:40.3 | Today's mystery takes us to the world of healthcare and a marvellous and seemingly magic medicine that can quite literally make anyone feel better. |
| 0:50.3 | What is this potent potion you may ask? |
| 0:52.3 | Well, it's something called a placebo, a powerful pill containing, wait for it, zero medicine. |
| 1:00.9 | And that nevertheless makes you feel better for no apparent reason. |
| 1:05.3 | We'll also be investigating the evil cousin of the placebo, something called the nocebo. And these have completely the opposite |
| 1:14.4 | effects. No need to worry if you don't know your placebos from your paracetamols or your |
| 1:19.6 | calpol from your COVID vaccine. We've got some fantastic experts who will be holding our |
| 1:24.4 | hands and guiding us today. We've got two of the leading researchers in the field of |
| 1:29.3 | Placebos and Nocebos helping us and we'll be hearing from them very shortly. |
| 1:34.3 | This is Mysteries of Science. |
| 1:40.3 | It's the middle of the Second World War. |
| 1:42.3 | This was a conflict between 1939 and 1945 that involved more than 30 countries. |
| 1:49.0 | And medicines are running low. |
| 1:52.0 | The US Army in southern Italy, a key battleground, is desperate to care for its wounded soldiers. |
| 1:59.0 | Supplies of morphine, which acts as a strong painkiller, have |
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