Summary: What did the 2009 swine-origin H1N1 outbreak teach us about how to prepare for future pandemics? This program addresses the issue by traveling to viral hot spots around the world and interviewing high-ranking disease-prevention experts. Viewers learn about the basics of influenza microbiology, the factors that distinguish swine-origin H1N1 from a seasonal virus, its mechanisms for spreading,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: New and lethal strains of TB are emerging worldwide which cannot be treated by conventional drugs. One estimate puts the number of new MDR TB cases per year as high as 400,000. After 40 years without any research into new drugs, the race is on to find a cure for MDR TB. This program travels between Peru and South Korea as it examines both the current impact of TB super strains in the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: For decades, the medical establishment has focused on producing pharmaceutical weapons to fight cancer-but some scientists are disillusioned with that approach. This program looks at developments in late-20th-century cancer research, showing how environmental and dietary studies have become marginalized. Biostatistician John Bailar laments conventional wisdom, calling for more preventive...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: From hydras to humans, every organism on Earth can trace its ancestry back to the first primitive cell. Will biotechnology one day create a cell outside of that family tree? This program looks at 21st-century genetic science and its search for the secret of life's creation. Background information highlights the Oparin-Haldane Hypothesis and its vision of a prebiotic soup as well as Stanley...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Killer bugs like the plague, cholera, and typhoid were all brought under control by adventuring self-experimenters. This program looks at medical trailblazers who took the ultimate risk and injected or ingested some of the most terrifying diseases known to humankind. Describing Louis Pasteur's flirtation with mortality-during which he asked his assistants to inject him with the rabies virus-the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: A killer flu outbreak isn't just a developing-world nightmare. The influenza virus is so adaptable that the West is as vulnerable as anywhere else. This program outlines the history of influenza and explores current research into what steps, if any, might prevent a future flu pandemic. Viewers are shown how the virus mutates to resist vaccines and has an uncanny ability to jump species...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1971, President Nixon declared war on cancer, envisioning a cure within five years. What mechanisms-financial, political, and medical-did his announcement set in motion? Are we any closer to winning the war? This program takes on those questions, examining milestones in cancer research and studying forces outside the scientific world that have driven or hindered anti-cancer efforts....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: When polio vaccines were first developed, many experts thought the disease would be fully eradicated within decades. Tragically, as this film shows, it has survived in places like Afghanistan and northern Nigeria. These locations are now acting as disease reservoirs, with children the hardest-hit demographic and with travelers re-infecting other countries once thought invulnerable....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
View online at AVOD
Summary: They lurk in nursing homes and hospitals-anywhere where people's resistance is down. One, VRE, a usually harmless microbe found in the human bowel and genital tract, is already drug-resistant; the other, MSRA, currently treatable with vancomycin-type antibiotics, is quickly becoming resistant to their effects. Using real-life case studies of patients who are infected, this program studies the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The prescription of antibiotics is a medical tightrope-walk. The drugs save lives, but, because of overuse, may soon usher in a new era of super-germs. This program outlines the discoveries of bacteria and penicillin and sheds light on the frightening emergence of multi-resistant, often deadly microbes during the last six decades. Presenting interviews with researchers who are deeply involved...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: On World AIDS Day 2003, WHO and UNAIDS released a detailed and concrete plan to reach the 3 by 5 target of providing antiretroviral treatment to three million people living with AIDS in developing countries and those in transition by the end of 2005. It was a vital step toward the ultimate goal of providing universal access to AIDS treatment to all those who need it. This program travels to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: John Hunter, surgeon to King George III, was said to have inoculated himself with a venereal disease-an example of well-intentioned research with more than one unfortunate result. This program presents a fascinating overview of the battle against infectious diseases, depicting several instances in which doctors exposed themselves to syphilis, yellow fever, cholera, or other nefarious microbes...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This eye-opening program delves into humanity's war with lethal microorganisms and viruses. Astoundingly detailed images by medical photographer Lennart Nilsson illuminate how microbes attack the body and how our immune systems defend it. Reenactments of remarkable medical discoveries-penicillin, blood groups, methods of malaria control, and the polio vaccine-are portrayed, and cutting-edge...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Because of constant use of disinfectants, a hospital is a place where only the fittest microbes survive, a dilemma that raises the stakes of even routine surgical procedures. This program looks at how germs develop partial or total antibiotic resistance and how researchers are pursuing new lines of attack to keep pace with these highly adaptive organisms. Computer imaging and electron...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Biogeneticists are engineering new yeasts and fungi as well as entirely new growing methods, and in the process are giving a new definition to the word "natural." If yeasts and fungi can turn decaying wood into sugar, why should humans not be able to grow ethanol cheaply and efficiently? This program follows the course of the research into the artificial culture of natural trees, as well as new...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008