Horizon

[Agile]

Unfortunately I missed the Horizon program.

However, some of you might like to know how the "kemotherapy" works in the case of Lukemia.

The terminology may be wrong because the term of "kemotherapy" seems to mean chemical treatment.

Lukemia is caused by cancerous reproduction of the white blood corpusles. The solution is actually quite crude.

First a bone marrow ( when the white bits are made ) donor is found who matches the patient. A core sample is taken containing the marrow and stored.

The patient is then exposed to whole body atomic ( ionising ) radiation. This causes vomiting and the usual symptoms of radiation exposure. The interesting thing is that the radiation level kills the cancerous cells which are more susceptible to radiation. It also causes the loss of hair !!!

The patient is then barrier nursed because they have no immunity to infections as the white blood cells ( leucosites ) have been killed.

After a few days, the donor's bone marrow is then injected into the blood stream and it finds its way into the bone marrow and if all goes well it then reproduces white blood cells and the patient returns slowly to fairly normal health.

The long term response is not yet known and the life expectancy is not very high as many patients have remissions within five years. One specialist I spoke to told me she was going to dinner with one of her first patients that she had treated 10 years before. It sounded as if that was a more successful treatment as the average life expectancy after treatment is probably still only five-six years.

I thought that it was nice that the patient kept in touch with the specialist who had kept him alive for the last 10 years.

Tony

 

[kendor]

I wonder if statistics are being manipulated a little (perhaps as a government ploy to get us to accept Nuclear power stations more readily)

One of my friends is a doctor in Minsk and she has seen a HUGE increase in throat and thyroid cancers within Belarus - particularly in younger people. Also she has told me about MASSIVE increases in the number of children that are being born with very alarming disfigurements.

I didn't see Horizon, but wonder if they addressed these issues, and if so, how did they explain the increase in the incidences of these issues since the Chernobyl disaster - or did they totally bypass these facts?

Also, from what she has told be - there was a bit of a 'hush up' about actual deaths because the price of 'raw fuels' was, and is very high in some of the effected countries (in debt to Russia for a very large amount of money)- therefore it was not in their governments interests to turn people away from the concept of nuclear power.

I have a few friends in Russian and former Russian countries and it is always very interesting to see how OUR news reports issues - it is often quite different than how they hear things Not that I am cynical about politics of course

Unfortunately you are probably right, the fact is that programming these days tends not to be factual anymore but takes an editorial stance for whatever that particular editor's viewpoint or agenda or political stance is.

The Regulatory bodies that supposedly control what we see on the box tend not to intervene unless prompted to and that takes a lot of prompting, whether by a governmental body or through mass public protest and who's gonna complain about a few innacuracies in a tv programme?

Working in the Industry certainly opens your eyes to what goes on!

 

[Spark123]

I missed the Horizon programme on Chernobyl but I did see the one on Discovery channel. This one said that there was about 10,000 of the liquidators died from the effects of the radiation. This is not to mention the amount of cancers some of which can be attributed to the release of radioactive iodine gas into the atmosphere which is especially dangerous to chidren.
Which industry do you work in Kendor, TV?

 

[joe-90]

I missed the Horizon programme on Chernobyl but I did see the one on Discovery channel. This one said that there was about 10,000 of the liquidators died from the effects of the radiation. This is not to mention the amount of cancers some of which can be attributed to the release of radioactive iodine gas into the atmosphere which is especially dangerous to chidren.
Which industry do you work in Kendor, TV?

You don't need 10,000 liquidators to put a company into receivership.

Kendor worked on Fantasy Island.