For questions 1-10, listen to a recording about the placebo effect and fill in the missing information using

NO MORE THAN
THREE WORDS. You will hear the recording TWICE.

- In an experiment conducted in 1996, 56 subjects were deceived into thinking that a mixture with no (1) ______pain-
killer______________ called Trivaricane alleviated the pain in their fingers. This is a demonstration of what is called the placebo
effect.

- The term “placebo”, coined back in the 1700s, literally means “I shall please” in Latin and implies a history of (2)
____________________.

- To convince people that they actually worked by copying authentic treatments, placebos had to assume such forms as sugar pills,
water-filled injections, and even (3) ____________________.

- Doctors also discovered that placebos can be used in (4) ____________________ to assess the effects of a new drug without the
risk of biased results.

- However, due to (5) ____________________, this use of placebos is now less common than it is in the past. Instead, placebos are
now used as a control to (6) ____________________ tests in which the effects of a new drug and an old or alternative drug need to
be precisely compared.

- But placebos themselves also make their impact on patients’ health, relieving them from various ailments like severe pain, heart
problems and (7) ____________________. This is something that we have not been able to explain.

- While some argue that the phenomenon is merely a confusion with other factors such as false reports, researchers think (8)
____________________ that improve symptoms are truly activated by the patients’ expectations of recovery, stemming from their
belief that a placebo is real.

- Nevertheless, placebos are not necessarily immaculate. In some cases, those who place too much faith in these fake drugs may
potentially overlook treatments that are (9)____________________, not to mention the fact that they can obscure
(10)____________________. The placebo effect is truly an example of how the most intriguing subjects originate right from our
brains.

(1) pain-easing properties

(2) placating troubled patients
(3) sham surgeries
(4) clinical trials
(5) ethical concerns
(6) fine-tune
(7) asthma
(8) physiological factors
(9) proven to work
(10) clinical results

Transcript:

In 1996, 56 volunteers took part in a study to test a new painkiller called Trivaricaine. On each subject, one index finger
was covered in the new painkiller while the other remained untouched. Then, both were squeezed in painful clamps. The
subjects reported that the treated finger hurt less than the untreated one. This shouldn't be surprising, except Trivaricaine
wasn't actually a painkiller, just a fake concoction with no pain-easing properties (1) at all.

What made the students so sure this dummy drug had worked? The answer lies in the placebo effect, an unexplained
phenomenon wherein drugs, treatments, and therapies that aren't supposed to have an effect, and are often fake,
miraculously make people feel better.

Doctors have used the term placebo since the 1700s when they realized the power of fake drugs to improve people's
symptoms. These were administered when proper drugs weren't available, or if someone imagined they were ill. In fact,
the word placebo means "I shall please" in Latin, hinting at a history of placating troubled patients (2).

Placebos had to mimic the real treatments in order to be convincing, so they took the form of sugar pills, water-filled
injections, and even sham surgeries (3). Soon, doctors realized that duping people in this way had another use: in
clinical trials (4).
By the 1950s, researchers were using placebos as a standard tool to test new treatments. To evaluate a new drug, for
instance, half the patients in a trial might receive the real pill. The other half would get a placebo that looked the same.
Since patients wouldn't know whether they'd received the real thing or a dud, the results wouldn't be biased, researchers
believed. Then, if the new drug showed a significant benefit compared to the placebo, it was proved effective.

Nowadays, it's less common to use placebos this way because of ethical concerns (5). If it's possible to compare a new
drug against an older version, or another existing drug, that's preferable to simply giving someone no treatment at all,
especially if they have a serious ailment. In these cases, placebos are often used as a control to fine-tune (6) the trial so
that the effects of the new versus the old or alternative drug can be precisely compared.

But of course, we know the placebos exert their own influence, too. Thanks to the placebo effect, patients have
experienced relief from a range of ailments, including heart problems, asthma (7), and severe pain, even though all
they'd received was a fake drug or sham surgery. We're still trying to understand how.

Some believe that instead of being real, the placebo effect is merely confused with other factors, like patients trying to
please doctors by falsely reporting improvements. On the other hand, researchers think that if a person believes a fake
treatment is real, their expectations of recovery actually do trigger physiological factors (8) that improve their symptoms.
Placebos seem to be capable of causing measurable change in blood pressure, heart rate, and the release of pain-
reducing chemicals, like endorphins. That explains why subjects in pain studies often say placebos ease their discomfort.
Placebos may even reduce levels of stress hormones, like adrenaline, which can slow the harmful effects of an ailment.

So shouldn't we celebrate the placebo's bizarre benefits? Not necessarily. If somebody believes a fake treatment has
cured them, they may miss out on drugs or therapies that are proven to work (9). Plus, the positive effects may fade over
time,and often do. Placebos also cloud clinical results (10), making scientists even more motivated to discover how they
wield such power over us.

Despite everything we know about the human body, there are still some strange and enduring mysteries, like the placebo
effect. So what other undiscovered marvels might we contain? It's easy to investigate the world around us and forget that
one of its most fascinating subjects lies right behind our eyes.