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
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Summary: Around the world, hospitals have become known for something other than healing-in fact, quite the opposite. This program follows the challenges faced by various hospitals, many of them state-of-the-art facilities, that have become hosts to nearly invincible germs. Focusing on the bacteria known as MRSA, the video goes inside French, German, and Dutch hospitals battling the sinister and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: On September 30, 2004, pharmaceutical giant Merck voluntarily withdrew its popular painkiller Vioxx after it was linked to increased risks of heart attack and stroke. Was Merck's move driven by genuine concern for patients? Or, given findings from earlier studies, was the recall a self-protective move that came too late? This CNBC investigation takes viewers through the process by which one of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: With unprecedented and exclusive access to current clinical trials, this program appraises the successes and future potential of regenerative medicine. One featured patient is Joy Veron-paralyzed while trying to save her children from a car accident-who has stem cells from her nose transplanted into her back. The film also follows a heart attack victim who has his own bone marrow stem cells...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Although Alexander Fleming is usually credited with the discovery of penicillin in 1928, no penicillin-based antibiotic was actually developed for human use until 1938 through the work of Australian pathologist Howard Florey and German biochemist Ernst Chain. This program puts Fleming's contribution in scientific perspective. Live interviews, journal accounts, and archival footage lead the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: At the crossroads of chemistry and medicine lie opportunities to eradicate disease. This program guides students through advances in biotechnology and genetic engineering that may lead to long-sought medical treatments and cures. Presenting the 19th-century development of aspirin as the first synthetic imitation of a naturally derived medicinal substance, the video demonstrates large-scale,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Drugs that can cure cardiovascular disease, rather than simply slowing cholesterol buildup, are currently in development. This program examines the history of anti-cholesterol drug production, as well as current biochemical research that might lead to the eradication of heart attacks and strokes. Describing scientific studies of isolated populations-most notably the inhabitants of Limone,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Given the limits of today's medical technology, a three-year trip to Mars would place astronauts in grave danger. Thus, NASA has divided its attention between outer and inner space, aiming to create self-sufficient nanomedicine by the year 2020. This program studies health care research driven by that goal. With exciting animation sequences and conversations with top-level experts, the video...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Use this program to emphasize connections between the Earth's natural resources and the latest advances in technology and medicine. The video shows how research into the chemical makeup of geological and biological materials drives the innovation of energy systems, building techniques, and pharmaceuticals-and how these improvements can save lives and reduce stress on the environment. Resin...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Do the world's rainforests contain a cure for cancer and AIDS? This intriguing program travels to Jakarta, Surabaya, and the jungles of Kalimantan to investigate the preparation and use of natural remedies to combat illnesses such as skin fungus, malaria, and even AIDS. But logging continues unabated, even as ethnobiologists from the National Cancer Institute and the Harvard Medical School...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Once conducted almost entirely on dry land, the hunt for biochemical and pharmaceutical resources is shifting to the world's oceans. This program examines various phases of that research-algae and sponge extraction around the globe, the growing utilization of toxic substances produced by some marine organisms, and the practical application of treatments and cures that are often a dozen years in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Despite its amorous nickname, the vinchuca, or kissing bug, actually gives its sleeping victims a malevolent bite sucking blood and transmitting a microscopic parasite called Tripanisoma cruzi. The microbe, in turn, produces Chagas disease, which currently afflicts 16 million people in South America and will kill a quarter of them in middle age. This program travels into the mountain villages...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Among the research and funding experts of the global health community, the "Big Three" diseases are AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. As urgent as it is to fight these illnesses, many others also need attention and aren't getting it. These "forgotten diseases" include elephantiasis (or lymphatic filariasis), bilharzia (or schistosomiasis), and river blindness (or onchocerciasis), among others....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: More and more drug-resistant strains of Haemophilus influenzae type b bacteria (Hib) have emerged in recent years, and the consequences of late or no treatment are devastating. The microbe is estimated to cause at least 3 million cases of serious disease-often meningitis-and up to 700,000 deaths each year among young children. This program examines the tragic problem in Bangladesh, where the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Lymphatic filariasis, a mosquito-borne parasitic disease commonly known as elephantiasis, results in massive swelling of the limbs and genitals, leading to severe disability. Over 40 million people are seriously incapacitated and disfigured by it, with millions more at risk. Now an ambitious campaign is underway to eliminate the disease globally by interrupting its transmission. Two...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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: Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne infection, which affects some 50 million people annually. It is now endemic in more than 100 countries in Africa, South America, the Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, and the Western Pacific. This program journeys to Thailand to join scientists at the forefront of the fight to contain and eliminate Dengue. Viewers learn about one of the principal challenges...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
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: Thriving in more than 50 developing countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, trachoma is the leading cause of blindness in the world. It is at its worst in rural communities and women are its favorite victims. Trachoma is a bacterium that lurks in stagnant water and, once established in a human host, creates deforming scar tissue in the eye. This program shows how the struggle against the disease...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: This year alone, eight million people will become infected with tuberculosis. Like the common cold, TB spreads through the air when sufferers cough, sneeze, spit, or just talk. One needs only to inhale a few germs to catch it. This program tracks the disease, its impact, and the science behind it, from the U.K. to India to Malawi. At the Imperial College in London, Professor Douglas Young is...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011