The Dopamine Debate
Movers and Shakers: a podcast about life with Parkinson's
Podot
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week we're doing something a little bit different on Movers & Shakers. We're joined in the pub by Dr Jonathan Sackner-Bernstein, a distinguised American cardiologist with a controversial idea: that Parkinson's might be caused by too much, rather than too little, dopamine. Sackner-Bernstein's ideas call into question the underlying assumptions of the condition and have been refuted by many of his colleagues. But the debate is worth having – not least as the opposition is eloquently represented by Dr Kit Wu – because it shows just how much we still don't understand about PD, dopamine, and the human brain.
Movers & Shakers is brought to you in partnership with Cure Parkinson's.
Presented by Rory Cellan-Jones, Gillian Lacey-Solymar, Mark Mardell, Paul Mayhew-Archer, Sir Nicholas Mostyn and Jeremy Paxman.
Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.
Sound mixing by Ewan Cameron.
Music by Alex Stobbs.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pod-O |
| 0:02.0 | You're listening to Movers and Shakers, a podcast about living with Parkinson's. |
| 0:10.0 | The show is sponsored by Cure Parkinson's, whose urgent and only goal is to find a cure, |
| 0:15.0 | and funded by Bordwave, a networking community for technology leaders and a passionate supporter of Cure Parkinson's. |
| 0:23.3 | For more details on the charity's progress around research and its fundraising, please visit |
| 0:27.9 | cureparkinsons.org.uk. |
| 0:35.3 | Hello and welcome to Movers and Shakers, the award-winning podcast. |
| 0:40.6 | It's like Pavlov's dogs, you know, it's just boom, boom. |
| 0:44.3 | I'm Rory Kethynne Jones, and we're back in the pub. |
| 0:47.1 | Let's see who's turned up. |
| 0:48.5 | Nicholas Mostyn. |
| 0:49.5 | Paul Mayhewarcher, Mark Modell. |
| 0:51.8 | Julian Nacy Solomon. |
| 0:53.1 | What a cast. |
| 0:53.9 | Now, if there's one thing we know about Parkinson's, |
| 0:56.5 | it is that it is caused by a deficiency of dopamine. |
| 0:59.7 | That's what young doctors training to be a neurologist learn in their very first lecture. |
| 1:04.1 | And that's the view of just about every scientist working on potential drugs. |
| 1:08.0 | But for more than a decade, one doctor has put forward an alternative view. |
| 1:12.6 | Dr Jonathan Sackner Bernstein, a cardiologist, argues that the problem is not too little dopamine, |
| 1:18.5 | but too much. He says he has identified a drug that can treat Parkinson's by reducing dopamine, |
| 1:24.2 | and he alleges that this will have a better outcome for patients than taking |
... |
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