Scientific American Frontiers on PBS

This episode explores the medical value of placebos and what host Alan Alda calls the “chemistry between a hopeful patient and a caring doctor.” Alda surveys the placebo effect on patients with Parkinson's disease. And he checks out a test study in which healthy people are given cold viruses and treated with either medication or sugar pills, and another in which a volunteer is given a “sham” acupuncture treatment. “While it may be all in the mind,” Alda concludes, “the placebo effect is real and reasonable.”