Horizon: The Energy of the Placebo, BBC Two, evaluation

I enjoy placebos. I adore the word, for starters – I’m rolling it round my mouth right now, like a shiny pill – and I enjoy the concept. That people are so dumb, or so ingenious, that they can dupe themselves into getting better. According to final night’s Horizon: The Energy of Placebo (BBC Two), which was an excellent exploration of the placebo result, occasionally even when we know we’re taking a placebo it nonetheless helps make us far better. That’s both doubly dumb or doubly brilliant.

The documentary went even more, using experiments to suggest that merely having a pleasant doctor can make you really feel far better. It grew to become obvious that just about anything can make you really feel much better, which produced it specifically aggravating that I still have tennis elbow for no obvious explanation after seven months. Perhaps I just want a good talking to.

Anyway, as Television, this Horizon was a small significantly less dry than some of the films in the strand can be, primarily since it is awfully very good enjoyable viewing men and women becoming lied to and then acting on that false information. In theatrical terms, it’s a traditional instance of dramatic irony.

It all created me consider of Lucy Prebble’s recent play The Result, which looked at the limits of neuroscience. A single issue The Impact touched on that Horizon did not was that the ultimate wonder drug may be no drug at all. Obviously this is not great information for massive pharma, or indeed pharma of any proportion, and but Horizon chose not to go there. Most likely this was because without all of the big pharmaceutical organizations footing the bill, none of this research would be happening in the first place.

I’m glad it is: it’s constantly enlightening to be proven just how enlightened your personal physiology can be. And also so wonderfully contrary – my favourite take away truth from final night, for instance, was that red pills (with absolutely nothing in them) are a lot more effective for treating discomfort. Blue tablets do it for anxiety. Unless you’re Italian, in which situation a blue pill makes you tense, due to the fact it’s the colour of your football crew.

Horizon: The Energy of the Placebo, BBC Two, evaluation