SuperDoctors under the microscope
Kate Whiting
14/ 8/2008
PROFESSOR Robert Winston gently holds the hand of mother Yvette
McGeehan as she cries over the loss of her son.
She had twins Dominic and Rebecca through IVF treatment, but before
he was eight, Dominic contracted meningitis and fell into a coma.
The family had tried everything they could to bring him back and, as
a last resort, they found a doctor in Dominica - one of more than 200
million on the internet offering `stem cell cures'.
Foetal cells were injected into Dominic's brain, but despite initial
signs of improvement he died.
In new three-part series SuperDoctors (BBC1, 9pm, Thursday August
21), Winston sets out to tackle some of the most controversial new
medical frontiers - from expensive robotic surgery to improvised
treatments in Africa.
The episode on stem cells reveals the unproven treatment could have
contributed to Dominic's death and the medical expert issues a stark
warning to the medical profession against making unfounded claims.
We also follow two men with serious heart disease - David, 53 and
Alec, 75 - who have turned to stem cell treatment as their last hope.
David takes part in a double-blind placebo trial in Britain - the
only way to find out if stem cells really work - while Alec, who is
too ill to take part in the trial, makes a life-threatening journey
to Germany to have stem cells from his pelvis injected into his
heart - a procedure he doesn't really understand.
Winston, 68, said: "That's a real issue for medical tourism, whether
you should dissuade people from doing something which might help
them, when you haven't got any clear evidence it wouldn't.
Dissuade
"With the Germany situation, it would be very difficult to dissuade
Alec. With the McGeehans, I think every single effort should have
been made to dissuade them, but I don't think you would ever have
dissuaded Yvette.
"She was absolutely focused on Dominic and for her, as she says to
the camera, 'We wanted our son back'.
"You can't deal with that emotion rationally, so therefore you've got
to do two things - you've got to educate people more about the
limitations of expectation and equally you've also got to educate the
profession to be much more stringent about how it presents things
that it cannot prove."
SuperDoctors is, in Winston's words, 'a bit unusual' for a BBC
science programme.
He said: "We raise a lot of uncomfortable issues. It's very critical,
very thought-provoking, clearly controversial - and one of the most
serious programmes the BBC have done this year."
The robotics episode throws up the ever-present question of how the
NHS should be spending its money.
"We see surgery which probably doesn't work, on the base of the
brain, which is the most dangerous area of the body," explains
Winston.
Abandons
"The surgeon with this £12m piece of equipment abandons it and goes
on to operate by hand. Of course, he gets the result he needs and
there's no harm done, but you have to ask if it's justified to spend
all that money on this machine and what's the advantage?"
In complete contrast, the last episode sees Winston in poverty-
stricken Malawi where orthopaedic surgeon Steve Mannion has clinics
for children and adults with club feet.
With no money and no access to technology, Mannion has resorted to
using a little-known physiotherapy treatment called the Ponseti
technique - with excellent results.
Winston is in no doubt of the lessons Mannion's ingenuity has for the
West.
He said: "We're spending all this money on robots and maybe we should
spend a bit more time thinking about how we might help healthcare in
places like Africa more effectively, without spending vast sums of
money.
"I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing hi-tech, we should be more
responsible about how we place our budget."
Lord Winston has become a stalwart of the BBC, as recognisable as Sir
David Attenborough and Bruce Forsyth, and has made it his lifetime's
work to make science more accessible.
Throughout 15 television series, the moustachioed expert has explored
every aspect of medicine from child development, in the ongoing Child
Of Our Time, to what makes us tick in the Bafta award-winning The
Human Body.
Born in London, Winston studied medicine at Cambridge on a whim - he
applied to do Natural Sciences but decided he was 'more interested in
dealing with people than microscopes'
microscopes anyway when he specialised in fertility - pioneering
developments in IVF treatment.
Click here to read Ian Wylie's TV blog.
http://www.manchest
tors_under_the_
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StemCells subscribers may also be interested in these sites:
Children's Neurobiological Solutions
http://www.CNSfoundation.org/
Cord Blood Registry
http://www.CordBlood.com/at.cgi?a=150123
The CNS Healing Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNS_Healing
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