In the 19 eighties, there'd been riots in hansworth and birmingham. Men who protested at that time for their rights were labelled with this diagnosis of gangia psychosis. In other words, the drugs had made them mad, and that's why they were out on the street. This was very much a racialized label. So 25 % of young black men in birmingham oran that time were getting this diagnosis. The equivalent figure for white men was just one%. And of course, his had major ramifications, because these men were injected and institutionalized just about a 30 minute walk from where i revisited those streets at the time.
When people feel ill they go to the doctor for a diagnosis and what they hope will be the first step on the road to recovery. But former consultant neurologist Jules Montague argues that getting a diagnosis isn’t as simple as it sounds – they can be infected by medical bias, swayed by Big Pharma or political expedience, even refused because the condition isn’t officially recognised. In The Imaginary Patient Dr Montague meets those who have had to fight to get the right treatment.
The GP Gavin Francis knows only too well how desperate patients can feel with undiagnosed symptoms, but in his latest work, Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence he’s looking at the other end of the medical journey. He warns that getting better can take longer and be far more complex than most people understand.
The academic, Jennifer Jacquet, is interested in how far patients can be pawns in the wider power plays in the corporate world and Big Pharma. In The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World, she uses satire to expose the extraordinary lengths that corporations will go to quash inconvenient research, target scientists and forestall regulations.
Producer: Katy Hickman
This is the last show in the series; back on Monday 12th September.