Science Is Closing in on a New Way to Treat Pain
On this episode of The Future with Hannah Fry, she explores cutting-edge research that could move medicine beyond opioids and their deadly fallout.
A person points to a brain scan showing brain activity. See how scientists are researching new ways to control pain on The Future with Hannah Fry.
Photographer: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFPFor everyone, pain is a fact of life. For some, it’s excruciating and inescapable. But for a few, certain unique genetic characteristics have enabled them to avoid the kind of pain most humans take for granted. Driven in part by the deadly fallout of the opioid crisis, scientists have been developing new technologies to limit pain, in part by using what they’ve learned from the select individuals who live without it.
On this episode of The Future with Hannah Fry, Fry meets a young woman who has learned to live with the constant affliction of pain, traveling to Hartrlepool, UK, to hear from Amy Pohl, a rising Tik Tok star whose agonizing experiences with the disease CPRS led her to seek solutions outside of western medicine. Fry also interviews a pain research participant named Steven who discovered as a child that he could not experience pain. His genetic condition may indicate that a single protein can somehow determine whether one feels pain or not. If scientists can isolate and control it, it might be a huge step toward a new method of controlling pain.