| Description |
1 online resource (streaming video file) (48 min. 45 sec.) ; 295972832 bytes |
| Summary |
A doctor in China claims to be able to make people with spinal cord injuries walk again through a controversial operation using the cells of an aborted foetus. Is he really a miracle worker, or is he just a maverick?Depending on who you ask, Dr. Huang Honyung of Beijing's Xishan Hospital is performing medical miracles. The doctor has taken advantage of China's lax safety regulations and different ethical considerations to perform pioneering medical operations on those with accident induced paralysis and degenerative muscular conditions. He has become the last hope for hundreds of paralysed patients worldwide who are desperate to walk again, but have been disappointed by Western medicine. Dr. Huang claims to have restored bodily functions that Western doctors assert are lost forever by injecting olfactory cells (OECs - the most rapidly regenerating cells in the human body), taken from 4 month old aborted foetuses, into the patients' brains and spines to assist with the recovery process. Dr. Huang's 'miracle cure' has made worldwide headlines, and he claims he has successfully treated almost 700 patients, but it seems too good to be true.Traditional Western medicine says that once damaged, the central nervous system cannot recover, and Western doctors and scientists will not accept Dr. Huang's procedure because it has not been clinically tested or proven. Yet paralysed patients from all over the world still flock to Dr. Huang even though the medical risks of the operation could outweigh the benefits. Several patients at the hospital who have made miraculous recoveries are interviewed, and one victim of paralysis is caught on film walking for the first time in seven months after the operation.More specifically, The Doctor Who Makes People Walk Again? follows the story of Vic Washby, a once athletic Englishman who can no longer walk and is losing control of his other muscular functions since developing a form of life-threatening motor neurone disease called ALS. He and his young wife, Katrina, and their two small children travel to China to undergo the procedure, and we watch them anxiously await the outcome in the days and weeks following. Although many other patients in the hospital make amazing recoveries, for Vic and Katrina the operation is not nearly as life-changing as they had hoped.Meanwhile, a leading scientist in this field, Professor Raisman, who has experimented with OEC treatment on rats, expects to start clinical trials of the procedure in the UK in the next two years. He believes, like Dr. Huang, that using this method there will be an historical breakthrough in the West where injuries that have never been treated before will be come treatable, and where the incurable will one day be cured. (From the UK, in English and Mandarin, English subtitles) |
| Notes |
Closed captioning in English |
| Event |
Broadcast 2010-08-02 at 19:30:00 |
| Notes |
Classification: PG |
| Subject |
Kinesiology.
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Olfactory receptors.
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Paralysis -- Psychological aspects.
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Paralytics.
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Spinal cord -- Wounds and injuries.
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Spinal cord -- Wounds and injuries.
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China -- Beijing.
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| Form |
Streaming video
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| Author |
Fairrie, Laura, director
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Flynn, Barbara, cast
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Harrison-Hansley, Milla, director
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