works

This World

Galleries and Reading Room

Library

Shop

Café

We’re undertaking research with website visitors to find out some more about you and what you thought about your visit. This survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete. Thank you for your time!

What brought you to our website today?

An investigation into potentially highly dangerous medical drug trials performed on children from deprived areas of New York whose parents have passed on the HIV / AIDS virus to them. We hear the story of Regina Mousa, a grandmother raising her daughter's 3 girls since her daughter died of AIDS. The fourth child, a boy named Garfield, was born HIV positive and was taken away by the authorities when Regina refused to give him medication that she felt certain was making him sicker. The programme then focuses much of its attention on the Incarnation Children's Centre, a home where many HIV positive children are taken when their parents refuse to give them drugs. It has come under close investigation in the last few years because of allegations that powerful drugs are being tested on the vulnerable children there. We hear from Jacklyn Haerger a pediatric nurse who worked there for 5 years, and from a young boy who was held there until he was 15 and now has the physiognomy of a 10-year-old. We also hear from lawyers who are battling for the authorities to come clean over drug trials on vulnerable members of the community - currently 98% of children held in this kind of 'care' home are black or latino.

1 video cassette (VHS) (30 min.) : sound, color, PAL.

Guinea pig kids.

Sergeant Schacht, a 24-year-old U.S. Medevac Crew Chief, tells harrowing stories of two encounters with wounded Iraqi civilians and describes how these have affected him.

The ugly of war.

As part of World AIDS day, this programme follows a day in the lives of six very different people from around the world who are all HIV positive. Narrated by Andrew Lincoln, this programme provides much documentary insight as well as factual information into how the HIV virus is contracted worldwide and how different sufferers are attempting to live around their illness. In the follow-up programme 'Living positive - the meeting' (our shelfmark: 3343V) the six people from this programme meet up with each other in London.

1 video cassette (VHS) (60 min.) : sound, color, PAL.

Living positive.

Filmed by an Iraqi doctor, this documentary looks at life in Al Yarmouk hospital which now deals almost exclusively with the treatment of bomb victims. Scenes show how difficult it is to maintain a hospital amidst such chaos and with such a lack of appropriate funding.

Baghdad a doctor's story.

This troubling documentary looks at how poor and illiterate patients in India are being hoodwinked into participating in clinical trials aimed at getting drugs licensed in the West. It is estimated that by 2010 there will be two million Indian citizens involved in clinical trials - Paul Kenyon investigates how the pharmaceutical companies recruit so quickly and extensively. We meet Vijay Kumar of Neeman Medical International who looks for recruits for drug trials for drug company Novatis. He explains that the large population of poverty-stricken Indians provides ripe picking for large pharmaceutical companies, and that the populations drug illiteracy is a bonus as they are often clear of any other medications making the trials easier to conduct. Kenyon meets cancer patients outside a hospital who have signed consent forms worded in English with a thumb print as they are illiterate. They seem to have little knowledge that their treatment involves them being guinea pigs for new medicines. B.N. Bhattathiri, a radiologist working at the Regional Cancer Center (which attracts key medical figures involved in Southern Indian drug trials) became concerned when new drug M4N was being tested on cancerous tumours. We hear from the family of one of the patients involved in this trial who now have no illusions that his current extremely poor health is at least in part due to his involvement in the trial. Ashwini Kumar, Drugs Controller General for India, admits that the protocols for obtaining informed consent are not very clear. Shashank Joshi from private hospital Lilayali in Mumbai refuses to participate in drug trials as he believes there is too much patient exploitation. He feels that patients are often so poor that to be offered 'free' medication seems enough of a benefit to outweigh any thought of risk. Arvind Chopra of Glaxo Smith-Kline says it is hard to get patients to acknowledge that a treatment is only a trial. In London, Vikram Patel investigated a drug being trialed in India on patients with bipolar disorder. He was shocked to discover that as part of the trial patients were taken off their normal medication and only some of them given the new drug, others a placebo, meaning that some extremely ill patients were receiving no medical help whatsoever. We meet two men with bipolar disorder affected by this trial. Vivek Kusumaker of Johnson & Johnson defends the trial. Throughout the programme patients repeatedly affirm their absolute faith in doctors - this is clearly also a factor open to exploitation by those conducting clinical trials in India.

This world.

This world

Drug trials - the dark side.

Hard-hitting documentary looking at the facts surrounding the recent outbreak of Ebola. We hear movingly from the village in Guinea where the infection is known to have first struck the family of Emile Ouamouna in December 2013. By March 2014 the virus had travelled hundreds of miles and killed fifty people. Dr Lamine Koivogui, Director of the Guinea Institute of Public Health was brought in to assess the situation - there is a harrowing film of his visit to a boy with a mystery illness. Koivogui took blood samples and isolated the virus as ebola. A field hospital was set up by MSF in the centre of the outbreak; it was felt that the sick should be isolated, the dead should be carefully buried and the vulnerable monitored. The WHO were alerted - Dr Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director-General for Health Security for WHO admits to how unready they were for the extent of the spread. Head of the Ebola Mission for MSF, Marc Poncin, describes the daily meetings that took place in which no decisions were made and he felt that the WHO downplayed the situation continuously. As MSF feared, Ebola hit the capital of Guinea and MSF went public in April 2014, naming it as an epidemic but were curbed from further action by the Government. Soon after, Ebola spread to Sierra Leone where, tragically, the disease killed a well-known healer called Mendinor whose funeral was attended by hundreds, spreading the disease far and wide. The Government, advised by Metabiota, then made the decision to treat Ebola victims at the state hospital in Kenema but this back-fired and spread rather than contained the problem. By June the epidemic was in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and was recognised as the largest Ebola outbreak the world had ever seen. The WHO still did not declare it to be a potentially international crisis even though at least eight hundred people had now died. Finally, after an infected Liberian travelled to Nigeria, the WHO declared the outbreak of Ebola as being a national crisis. Samuel Tarplah, Head Nurse at West Point Holding Center, an isolation clinic set up for Ebola victims in Monrovia, describes how local villagers raided it, dragging out sick and dead bodies, further contaminating themselves; eventually the sick were left to live on the streets. After Tom Frieden travelled from the US to assess the situation in Monrovia and insisted on immediate support, ten months after the start of the outbreak, a worldwide fight against the disease finally began. This, coupled with changing behaviour towards nursing the sick and burial rituals, finally slowed down the spread of the disease. Officially 10,000 people died but unofficially the number is thought to be much larger.

Outbreak:  The truth about Ebola

Professor Hans Rosling presents this episode of the BBC’s ‘This World’ Series: ‘Don’t Panic: How to End Poverty in 15 years’. Presenting in front of a live studio audience Rosling discusses poverty around the world and global efforts to deal with this problem. The main premise of the show is examining the United Nations 2015 Millennium Goal 1.1 aiming to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. After questioning the audience on their perceptions of poverty, Rosling explains the difference between ‘relative’ and ‘extreme poverty’ and uses projected graphs, diagrams and statistics to demonstrate his points on the history of poverty and the relative decline since 1800. Footage of a family from Malawi serves as a case study into people living in extreme poverty. A young family from Cambodia serve as another case study into a family who can enjoy some basic luxuries due to a growing economy.

This world (Television program)

Don't panic. How to end poverty in 15 years.

Dr. Dora Akunyili is regulator of Nigerias Food and Drug Agency and has to stop fake drugs coming into the country, a trade which has led to an outbreak of drug-resistant strains of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. The illegal drug trade is highly lucrative however and Akunyili's fight to stop the perpetrators has led to her being shot at and having her offices burnt down. Reporter Olenka Frenkiel follows Akunyili as she continues her campaign. The programme also looks at instances of fake medicines in Britain.

Bad medicine.

As part of World AIDS day, an earlier programme, 'Living Positively' (our shelfmark: 3342V) followed a day in the lives of six very different people from around the world who are all HIV positive. In this follow-up programme 'Living positive - the meeting' the six people from the previous programme meet up with each other in London.

Living positive : the meeting.

Stem cell transplants offer the prospect of 'science fiction-like' treatments for genetic disorders. The cells are harvested from fertilised embryos and aborted foetuses, and because of these ethical issues leading researchers in America have had their funding cut by the Bush government, forcing sufferers to head to Eastern Europe where treatment is more readily available. This World follows Stefano Tricarico - a 20-year-old from Italy with terminal muscular dystrophy, and other patients - to the Ukraine to see if transplanted foetal stem-cells injections really can help save or improve his, and other people's lives. The $25,000 treatment is offered by Ukrainian doctor, Alexander Smokodub, at a private clinic. But critics say the work has not been properly scientifically tested. Is this the future of science, or a fraud?

Wellcome uses cookies.

All filters

Active filters:

Guinea pig kids.

The ugly of war.

Living positive.

Baghdad a doctor's story.

Drug trials - the dark side.

Outbreak: The truth about Ebola

Don't panic. How to end poverty in 15 years.

Bad medicine.

Living positive : the meeting.

Last hope clinic.

Wellcome uses cookies.

Works search

All filters

Active filters:

Guinea pig kids.

The ugly of war.

Living positive.

Baghdad a doctor's story.

Drug trials - the dark side.

Outbreak: The truth about Ebola

Don't panic. How to end poverty in 15 years.

Bad medicine.

Living positive : the meeting.

Last hope clinic.

Wellcome Collection

Today’s opening times