Miracle Cures

Synopsis

In the second of this three-part series examining new medical frontiers, Professor Robert Winston looks at the challenge to harness the body's own repair system. What if we could grow and regenerate parts of our own body? It sounds like science fiction, but scientists and doctors believe they have already found the answer - stem cells.

Amazing claims have been made about stem cells, and they have been the subject of Professor Winston's own research for years. Miracle cures for every possible disease are promised on the internet, most of them from countries such as Argentina and Siberia where regulations are less strict.

The reason is that miracle cures are, as yet, completely without medical evidence. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence, but real medical trials are only just beginning.

We pick up on the first British trial for stem cells as a treatement for heart attacks and heart disease and follow a patient offering himself as a guinea pig in a double trial - so he's unsure whether he is getting the real or dummy treatement. But it is the only way science will know if stem cells work.

We also see a family who sought treatment for their brain damaged son, and lost everything, 180,000 pounds and their son's life, in a desperate bid to obtain stem cell treatments in unregulated clinics across the world.

And we look at the plight of desperate patients, willing to try anything to save the lives of loved ones, and question how medicine can best use such patients to advance medicine and cross new frontiers, rather than letting them suffer or die in vain.

Credits

Presenter

Robert Winston

Broadcasts

1. Thu 28 Aug 2008
   21:00
   BBC One
2. Sat 13 Sep 2008
   01:30
   BBC One (South, South East, South West, West, Yorkshire only)
3. Sat 13 Sep 2008
   01:35
   BBC One (except Scotland, South, South East, South West, West, Yorkshire)
4. Sat 13 Sep 2008
   02:05
   BBC One (Scotland only)
5. Wed 20 May 2009
   21:00
   BBC HD