Austin O’Malley - Genius of Britain TV - Star Trek TV - Horizon TV - Jim Al-Khalili TV - Penn & Teller TV - Jacques Peretti TV - Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day TV - Fawlty Towers TV - The Office US TV - Rod Rohrich - Spitting Image TV - James H Boren - Joseph Lister - Ovid - The Young Ones TV - Storyville: Fatal Experiments: Downfall of a Supersurgeon TV - The Perfect Vagina TV - Louis Theroux TV - Obesity: How Prejudiced is Our NHS? TV - The Butcher Surgeon: Why Wasn’t He Stopped? TV - Panorama TV - The Unexplained Files TV - Tonight: The Butcher Surgeon TV - Plastic Surgery Capital of the World TV - Surgeons: At the Edge of Life TV - The Bleeding Edge 2018 - In Search of … TV - The Proof is Out There TV - Bodies of Evidence: The Butcher Surgeon TV -
Surgery is by far the worst snob among the handicrafts. Austin O’Malley
In the entrails of the dead one man was seeking the truth: his name was John Hunter. Genius of Britain II: A Roomful of Brilliant Minds, Channel 4 2012
‘What the surgeon did was to cut and hope for the best.’ ibid. Robert Winston
Hunter did hundreds of dissections. ibid.
John Hunter wrote three great treatises ... And became the highest paid surgeon in the land. ibid.
He helped take surgery from butchery to science. ibid.
If you do not operate, Sarek will die. You now have the means to perform the operation. I am volunteering myself as the blood donor. Star Trek s2e10: Journey to Babel s2e10, Spock to McCoy
The weakest link in the room isn’t usually the drugs or the equipment, it’s us – the surgical team. Horizon: How to Avoid Mistakes in Surgery, BBC 2013
Elaine Bromiley case: a routine sinus operation 2005 – intubation failed ... Their decision-making had become fatally compromised ... They had lost their situational awareness. ibid.
By concentration on a single task or activity its [brain] capacity to actually monitor other things by the passage of time is severely compromised. ibid.
Their checklist doesn’t just catch simple human mistakes ... it helps to flatten the traditional hierarchy. ibid.
Medicine is waking up to the experience of others. ibid.
Perhaps the most ghoulish aspect of Islamic medicine – surgery. Jim Al-Khalili, Science & Islam: The Language of Science, BBC 2009
Eye surgery was one of Islamic medicine’s great successes. ibid.
Modern medicine owes a considerable debt to the work of Islamic physicians. ibid.
It’s a body of knowledge that benefits all humans. ibid.
The most common surgery performed in America ... Over 60% of new-born male babies in the US. Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s3e1: Circumcision, Showtime 2005
Surgery has always been for the obese, but a new ground-breaking operation is now available for overweight people who want to be thin. Jacques Peretti, The Men Who Made Us Thin III, BBC 2013
Like all surgical patients Agnes has been screened for superbugs like MRSA. Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day V, BBC 2013
Enjoy the operation, dear. Let’s hope nothing goes wrong. Fawlty Towers s1e6: The Germans, BBC 1975
In Japan, heart surgeon. Number one. Steady hand. One day, Yakuza boss need new heart. I do operation. But, mistake! Yakuza boss die! Yakuza very mad. I hide in fishing boat, come to America. No English, no food, no money. Darryl give me job. Now I have house, American car, and new woman. Darryl save life. My big secret: I kill yakuza boss on purpose. I good surgeon. The best! The Office US s6e21: Happy Hour, Hide, NBC 2006
This plastic surgery addiction syndrome is not that uncommon. Dr Rod Rohrich, president American Society of Plastic Surgeons
Pro-Celebrity Your Life In Their Hands. Spitting Image s1e8, ITV 1984
I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for. James H Boren
If the love of surgery is a proof of a person’s being adapted for it, then certainly I am fitted to be a surgeon; for thou can’st hardly conceive what a high degree of enjoyment I am from day to day experiencing in this bloody and butchering department of the healing art. I am more and more delighted with my profession. Joseph Lister, letter to father 1853
Some wounds grow worse beneath the surgeon’s hand;
’Twere better that they were not touched at all. Ovid, Epistolae ex Ponto III:25
I’ve thought of a great new party game – dissection! The Young Ones s1e5: Interesting ***** Vyvian, BBC 1982
‘An experienced surgeon knows when to cut or not cut.’ Storyville: Fatal Experiments: Downfall of a Supersurgeon I, BBC 2016
This is Paolo Macchiarini, one of the world’s best surgeons in one of his most difficult moments. ibid.
One of Medicine’s greatest challenges: the lack of spare parts when something goes wrong inside our bodies … attempting to create the first windpipe out of plastic … Everything ended the same way: in death. ibid.
Is he a genius or is he a fraud? ibid.
End of 2014: Accused of falsifying research results and of gross misconduct. ibid.
‘They made misuse of the hype around stem cells to introduce something completely impossible.’ ibid. expert
Star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini was the first in the world to surgically implant a plastic trachea in a human being. Storyville: Fatal Experiments: Downfall of a Supersurgeon II
Macchiarini started to discover faults with his tracheas. ibid.
She didn’t seem to understand the risks she would undertake. ibid.
It was far worse than the doctors imagined. ibid.
Machiarrini’s operations had been stopped in Sweden. ibid.
The doctors got more and more frustrated at their superior’s lack of reaction … They documented all the faults they could find. ibid.
Plastic tracheas were not working as they should. When patient after patient died doctors began to wonder what was going on. Storyville: Fatal Experiments: Downfall of a Supersurgeon III
Falsifying scientific reports and risking patients’ lives. ibid.
This is a film about a new type of cosmetic surgery that has become the fastest growing in the UK. But it isn’t a facelift or a tummy tuck, this is virginal cosmetic surgery. The Perfect Vagina, 2008
Even teenage girls are seeing their GPs as they are convinced they need to go under the knife. ibid.
Shockingly, she’ll be awake while she has her labia sliced off. ibid.
It can take up to three months for the vagina to completely recover. ibid.
Restoration of the hymen: oh my God! Hymenoplasty: this restorative and reconstructive surgery repairs the hymen as though penetration has never occurred. ibid.
In Britain we have a serious problem with our weight. More of us are getting heavier and suffering from ill health, but who’s to blame? The cost of obesity is now so great it threatens to bankrupt our NHS. But what if I were to tell you there is a treatment that can help tackle our obesity crisis: one we’re not using because of an anti-fat prejudice. A bias that may even extend to our health services meaning many patients aren’t getting the best available care. A prejudice that has made the problem worse for us all. Obesity: How Prejudiced is the NHS? BBC 2017
Weight-loss surgery can put Type 2 diabetes into remission, even before the patient has lost any weight. I can’t understand why we’re not doing more of these operations. ibid.
Playing God with his patients. Botching surgery. Performing needless operations. And putting lives at risk. For more than a decade Ian Paterson wreaked havoc in NHS and private hospitals. In this programme the catalogue of complaints and warnings that could have stopped the Butcher Surgeon earlier. The Butcher Surgeon: Why Wasn’t He Stopped? Channel 5 2017