The woman who can’t feel pain, fear, or anxiety

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Jo Cameron was 65 when she had hip replacement surgery. Her pain score afterward was zero out of ten. The following year, she needed hand surgery for severe arthritis — a procedure doctors describe as “excruciating” during recovery. She assured her anesthesiologist she wouldn’t need painkillers. He was skeptical until she proved it, reporting no pain whatsoever.

Cameron, a Scottish woman now in her late seventies, has a mutation in a gene called FAAH-OUT that leaves her unable to feel pain or experience anxiety. She’s broken bones without noticing, burned herself, and only realized it from the smell of her own flesh. Her childbirth was painless. She heals faster than normal, scars less, and reports feeling virtually no negative emotions. Her blood contains unusually high levels of anandamide, an endocannabinoid your body produces naturally but usually breaks down quickly.

Her case, published in 2019, has energized research into FAAH inhibitors as potential treatments for chronic pain and anxiety disorders. Scientists are studying how her mutation works in hopes of developing drugs that could give others some of her benefits without the drawbacks — because there are drawbacks. Not feeling pain means not noticing injuries. Cameron has to check herself regularly for damage she can’t sense.

Her anesthesiologist remained skeptical even after surgery, so Cameron let him perform a test: pressing hard on the inner edges of her eye sockets, a maneuver painful enough to shock unconscious patients awake. She felt only pressure. That convinced him.