The views and opinions expressed in these radio programs are those of the individual hosts

and do not reflect the official policy or position of Universal Broadcasting Network.

Hello and welcome to Highwire Death Defying Talk without the safety net of advertising.

That's what drives television everywhere else. That's why they have to lie to you.

I don't have to because nobody pays me. Today I want to talk about placebo gate. Do you have a

slide? Placebo gates, probably not something you've heard of because I just made it up.

But it actually happened. I want to talk about the placebo effect. First of all, what is a placebo?

I've got this guy right here. Let's call him super placebo. Usually a salt water saline injection

or maybe it's a sugar tablet if you're doing a drug study with a pill or something like that.

A totally inert substance. The definition of placebo is actually this. A substance or treatment

that has no effect on human beings. That's what the CD says. Something that has no effect on

human beings. Now why do we need a placebo and what is the placebo about? What is this guy capable of?

Actually, placebo is actually capable of healing you. This is fascinating. We discovered years and

years many years ago that people that thought they were taking a drug. I think it actually started

back with the snake oil salesman in the old days. In the wild west, some guy would be selling

something like mercury to heal you. People would actually be healed because they believed it worked.

Well, now once we started creating drugs and vaccines, we realized that there is this effect. This

mind over matter effect where a person is healed simply by believing they've been giving something

that's good for them. That is the placebo effect. The double blind safety study means that one

group is going to get placebo, a totally inert substance that doesn't affect the human body at all

and then the drug or the vaccine. We're going to compare the study of the group, did the group that

got the placebo and how many of them cured themselves? If they cured themselves, what percentage was

...