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Follows two patients through groundbreaking 'first in-human' trials for CAR T-cell therapy, a treatment described as the beginning of the end of cancer. Not allowed to meet and separated by two floors of a hospital, 53-year-old Graham and 18-year old-Mahmoud are nevertheless bound together by their commitment to the treatment and their faith in the science. Terminally ill, the trial represents their only option. How do their ages and life experiences affect their physical and emotional response? For Martin Pule, the scientist who has developed the treatment, the responsibility of curing patients is both exciting and daunting. He knows he stands on the cusp of a breakthrough that could radically change the way we treat cancer. At the heart of this film is the complex relationship between the patients and the clinical team. How much hope can the patients be given when they are effectively going into these trials as human guinea pigs? The patients and clinical team must weigh up hope with realism and their response is a profound and revealing reflection of the human condition.
2019 • Health
The government rates the global outbreak of a deadly flu virus as a major threat to the UK. It could happen at any time. To predict the impact of the next pandemic more accurately than ever before, new data is needed - and lots of it. Dr Hannah Fry is on the case. She sets out to recruit the nation to download the BBC Pandemic app in a ground-breaking experiment to help plan for when the next deadly virus comes to the UK. How quickly will it spread? How many could it kill? What can we do about it? The BBC Four Pandemic experiment will find out. Hannah masterminds the experiment and adopts the role of Patient Zero by walking the streets of Haslemere in Surrey to launch the outbreak. Meanwhile, emergency physician Dr Javid Abdelmoneim finds out why flu is still such a danger to society a century after Spanish flu killed up to 100 million people worldwide. He meets researchers trying to discover what makes some people more contagious than others and visits a factory that will produce vaccine when the next pandemic flu virus emerges. Armed with the information he gathers and the results of the BBC Four Pandemic experiment, Hannah and Javid make a shocking revelation.
2018 • Health
England's Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam is joined by a host of top UK scientists to take a deep dive into the science of viruses. Plus, how new research could have an impact far beyond Covid-19.
S1E2 • Royal Institution Christmas Lectures - Going Viral • 2021 • Health
COVID-19 is far from the first pandemic to wreak havoc in the world. A long line of infectious diseases have devastated and in some cases destroyed entire societies. Almost all of them started in animals and made the jump to humans. We are terrified of pandemics. And with good reason. Infectious diseases have cost the lives of countless people over the centuries, devastating families, towns, and even societies. The Black Death spread across Europe and Asia in the 14th century leaving millions dead in its wake. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, European colonists brought smallpox to the Americas, the Pacific region and to Australia. In Europe, the 17th century saw a series of major epidemics. And at the end of the First World War, more people died of the Spanish flu than on the battlefield. This documentary examines the causes of these epidemics - whether it be lack of hygiene, interaction with animals, overcrowding, or the growth of cities - and how people travelling helped to spread disease and promote pandemics. It also sheds a light on the impact these infectious diseases have had on politics and societal change. Today, the world is facing COVID-19. Measures such as quarantine and lockdowns are being rolled out in an effort to control the spread of the virus; and, just as our ancestors did before us, some are questioning how effective they are. Over the centuries, scientists managed to develop treatments and medicines to help control or even eradicate infectious diseases. Virologists are facing that task again with the coronavirus, as the world frantically searches for ways to overcome a pandemic which threatens our modern way of life.
2020 • Health
For hundreds of years, psychiatry has treated voices and hallucinations as an enemy - regarding them as 'insanity' or 'madness' and seeing them as something to be quashed and even frightened of. But today, new scientific and psychological insights into how the brain works are leading to a radical rethink on what such experiences are - and how they should be treated. Horizon follows three people living with voices, hallucinations and paranoia, to explore what causes this kind of phenomena. Providing a rare first-hand insight into these experiences, they reveal just what it is like to live with them day to day. They examine the impact of social, biological and environmental influences on conditions traditionally associated with insanity, such as schizophrenia and psychosis, and within the film they look at how new ways of understanding the brain are leading to a dramatic change in treatments and approaches, and examine whether targeting the root causes of psychosis can lead to recovery. Above all, they try to uncover why it happened to them - and whether it could happen to you.
Renegade researchers are fighting the medical establishment by exploring a controversial cure for our vices: psychedelic drugs.
S2E1 • Breakthrough National Geographic • 2017 • Health