Animals and lab tests can only take you so far - in the end you have to experiment on people. But who would want to go first? Award-winning journalist and former doctor Michael Mosley exposes the curious, gruesome and sometimes fatal ways in which scientists have transformed medical knowledge by using themselves as guinea pigs.
1. ANAESTHESIA Michael reveals how pain-free surgery became possible because of self-experimenters like Humphrey Davy and Sigmund Freud. He also experiences for himself some of what they went through and watches a modern day self experimenter in action. Watch clip
2. DISCOVERING VACCINES Michael meets researchers infecting themselves with hookworm in a novel bid to control allergies. He tells the dramatic and sometimes tragic stories of the scientists who developed cures for some of history's greatest killers - rabies, typhoid and polio. Watch clip
3. DIET AND DISEASE Michael shows how the links between food and health were first established by men like Dr Joseph Goldberger. He famously ate a dying patient's excrement and by doing so changed forever what goes into our food. Watch clip
4. BEATING INFECTION Michael shows how, by infecting themselves with syphilis, yellow fever and cholera, doctors transformed our understanding of disease. He ends the series with Dr Barry Marshall who recently won a Nobel Prize thanks to a particularly courageous act of self-experimenting. Watch clip
You will need RealPlayer to access the clips above. Visit WebWise for help downloading RealPlayer
