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Science Odyssey, A: Matters of Life and Death
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Program Overview
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From the days of house-calls, when x-rays were a daring innovation,
to the era of high-tech hospitals and specialist physicians,
"Matters of Life and Death" tracks the passion and determination of
medical work in the twentieth century. Dramatic experiments, the
"politics" of science, and races against the clock form a backdrop
to the discovery of new treatments, antibiotics, and advances in
surgery and medical technology that have lengthened our lives and
caused us to rethink our assumptions about life and death.
Hour 1
Prologue
Pan American Exhibition, 1901
Introduction
Medical science in the age of McKinley
Bubonic Plague
How do we fight disease?
- Plague in San Francisco, 1899
- Public health policy—a product of its time
- War on rats defeats a second epidemic
- New understanding of public health
Pellagra
Prevention versus cure
- Joseph Goldberger seeks causes of pellagra
- Observation and experimentation
- The link between poverty and disease
Diabetes
Living with disease
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Dire treatments for a fatal disease
ANIMATION: Functions of the pancreas
- Frederick Banting and Charles Best's experiments
- Setbacks, successes, and squabbles
- The price of survival
Penicillin
A drug that changes history
- Alexander Fleming's work in WWI
- Fleming's 1929 discovery of penicillin
- Turning a discovery into a cure
- Mass production and massive change
Hour 2
Introduction
Postwar optimism
Heart Surgery
Another medical barrier collapses
- Daring heart experiments in WWII
- New procedures help surgeons beat the clock
- The heart-lung machine opens new possibilities
Organ Transplants
New solutions, new dilemmas
- Fighting rejection—the road to transplants
- Doctors face new doubts and pressures
- First heart transplant, 1967
- Success and its side effects
Cancer
Growing knowledge of an old enemy
- Increased lung cancer raises questions
- Smoking and other carcinogens
- Treatments—chemotherapy and childhood leukemia
- Scientists find cancer-controlling genes
- Search for root causes
The Role of Modern Medicine
Worldwide challenges
- Guinea worm parasite
- Health in developing nations
- The aging population
Conclusion
Using twentieth-century knowledge
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