2 . Chinese experts, based on the result of clinical trials, have __________ that Chloroquine Phosphate(磷酸氯喹), an antimalarial drug, has a certain _________ effect on the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a Chinese official said here Monday.

The experts have "unanimously" suggested the drug be included in the next version of the treatment guidelines and __________ in wider clinical trials as soon as possible, Sun Yanrong, deputy head of the China National Center for Biotechnology Development under the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), said at a press conference.

Chloroquine Phosphate, which has been used for more than 70 years, was selected from tens of thousands of existing drugs after _________ rounds of screening, Sun said. According to her, the drug has been under clinical trials in over 10 hospitals in Beijing, ___________ in south Guangdong Province and central China's Hunan Province, and has shown _______ good efficacy.

In the trials, the groups of patients who had taken the drug have shown better indicators than their parallel groups, in abatement(减轻) of fever, improvement of CT images of lungs, the percentage of patients who became _________ in viral nucleic acid tests and the time they need to do so, she said. Patients taking the drug also take a shorter time to recover, she added.

Sun gave an example of a 54-year-old patient in Beijing, who was _________ to hospital four days after showing symptoms. After taking the drug for a week, he saw all indicators   __________ and the nucleic acid turn negative.

_________, no obvious serious adverse reactions related to the drug have been found among the over 100 patients enrolled in the clinical trials, she said.

On February 15, several departments including the MOST, the National Health Commission and the National Medical Products Administration called a video conference to _________ drug research and clinical experts’ opinions on the drug’s efficacy on COVID-19.

The expert team, led by Zhong Nanshan, a __________ respiratory specialist and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, agreed that Chloroquine Phosphate can be used to treat more COVID-19 patients, Sun said.

Previous in vitro (体外的) experiments showed that it can block virus _________ by changing the acidity and basicity value inside the cell and interfering receptors of SARS coronavirus. It also shows immune-modulating (调节) activity, which may __________ its antiviral effect in vivo (体内的) and is widely _________ in the whole body, including the lungs, after oral administration.

3 . Placebos（安慰剂）Prove Powerful

Many doctors know the story of “Mr. Wright”. In 1957 he was diagnosed with cancer, and given only days to live. He had tumours（肿瘤）the size of oranges. He heard that scientists had discovered a new medication, Krebiozen, that was _______ against cancer, and he begged the doctor to give it to him. His physician, Dr Phillip West, finally agreed. After Mr. Wright had been given an injection on a Friday afternoon, the _______doctor found his patient out of his “death bed”, joking with the nurses the following Monday. “The tumours”, the doctor wrote later, “had _______ like snow balls on a hot stove.”

Two months later, Wright read medical reports that the medication was fake. His condition immediately got worse again. “Don’t _______ what you read in papers,” the doctor told Wright. Then he injected him with what he said was “a new super-refined double strength” version of the drug. _______,there was no drug, just a mix of salt and water, but again it worked. Wright was the picture of health for another two months until he read an official report saying that Krebiozen was _______. He died two days later.

This story has been _______ by doctors for a long time, dismissed as one of those strange tales that medicine cannot explain. The idea that a patient’s _______ can make a fatal disease go away has been thought of as too strange. But now scientists are discovering that the placebo effect is more powerful than anyone had ever thought. They are also beginning to discover how such miraculous results are _______. Through new techniques of brain imagery, it can be shown that a thought, a belief or a desire can cause chemical processes in the brain which can have powerful effects on the ________. Scientists are learning that some body reactions are not caused by information coming into the brain from the outside world, but by what the brain ________ to happen next.

Placebos are “lies that ________,” said Dr Anne Harrington, a historian of science at Harvard University. “The word placebo is Latin for “I shall please” (or I shall make you happy) and it is typically a treatment that a doctor gives to ________ patients to please them,”she said. “It looks like medication, but has no healing ingredients whatsoever.” Nowadays, doctors have much more powerful medicines to fight disease. But these treatments have not diminished（减弱）the power of the placebo, quite the ________. Maybe when scientists fully understand how placebos work, the powerful healing effects of the human ________will be used more systematically!