← You're Dead to Me
You're Dead to Me
Introducing Best Medicine - A Small Dose
00:07:42
Kiri Pritchard-McLean dissects funny and fascinating medicine with experts and comedians
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Kiri Pritchard-McLean
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Bartesian Bartesian. It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites too. I just got it for 50 off. So how about a Cosmopolitan or a Mistletoe Margarita? I'm thirsty. Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength and wow. Beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off. Tis the season to be jollier. Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker Bartesian. Pick up your phone and shake it to get $50 off any cocktail maker. Yes, you heard me. Sh. Phone and get $50 off. Don't delay. Ch ch ch. Chumba looking for excitement. Chumba Casino is here. Play anytime. Play anywhere. Play on the train. Play at the store. Play at home. Play when you're bored. Play today for your chance to win and get daily bonuses when you log in. So what are you waiting for? Don't delay. Chumba Casino is free to play. Experience social gameplay like never before. Go to Chumba Casino right now to play hundreds of games including online slots, bingo, Slingo and more. Live the Cumba Life@CumbaCino.com VGW no purchase necessary void web prohib terms and conditions 18/ BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts oh, here she is. I'm Kiri Pritchard Maclean and I'm just hopping on this feed because I really want to tell you about the second series of Best Medicine from BBC Radio 4. It's a comedy show that celebrates medicine's inspiring, funny and fascinating past, present and future. Now, each week, a load of top doctors, scientists, experts and comedians try to convince me what's the best medicine. Whether it's futuristic origami, surgical robots, life changing pineapple, uti, vaccines, Victorian scandal, magazines, denial, sleep, life saving, stem cell transplants, gold poo donors, or even crying, it's always something worth celebrating. Now if you like what you hear in this dose, you can listen to loads more episodes by searching for Best Medicine on BBC Sound. Sir Padra, what do you think is the best medicine? So Kerry, I think the best medicine is Dr. Charles Drew. Okay, how do I take him? Once a week until the smart goes. You're better than that, Kiri. I'm not. I'm not. So who is Dr. Charles Drew? Well, here in lies a tale. I'm curious to know who in the audience. Just like a little show of hands, does this name ring a bell with anyone at all? No. Hands on nothing. Nothing happening. Okay. His PhD was entitled Banked Blood. What he contributed to the world was the advances in technology and innovation in terms of getting together huge quantities of blood for transfusion. He died in 1950. He died very sadly in a car accident because he was very tired and fell asleep at the wheel. Oh, you're doing the work for me here. He was only 45 years old when he died. So it's a very short life, but he packed a lot of things into that life. He was born in 1904 in a place called Foggy Bottom in Washington, DC. Love that. Just down the road from Murky Gusset that. And this is so much like being in one of my classes. She's so close to separating. He's one of these go getting type people. We all know them. So even from a young age, I think one of my favorite stories about him as a kid was he had a newspaper round and he ended up kind of creating a confederacy. So he was managing six other newspaper boys. And Charles Drew was the first black man to get a PhD from Columbia University. So this is super impressive. The way blood transfusions used to work back in the day was actually person to person because blood clots and so this was the best way to keep it fresh. And what Drew did in this PhD was a huge survey of all of the different techniques for storing human blood for use. This became very important because this was happening in 1940. So the US hadn't joined the war yet, but its ally was Britain. He got blood from 14 and a half thousand donors, which was a total of five and a half thousand liters of plasma. This was another part of an innovation because blood plasma can be refrigerated and is generally a little bit safer in terms of transfusion for disease. So was he the first person to be doing this at this scale? Yeah. So the technology exists, but because he's that go getting guy, the guy that gets the six newspaper boys together in a syndicate, this is the amazing skill that he is bringing to this project. He was so successful that the American Red Cross brought him on board. Now here is his innovation. He invented blood mobiles. So the idea of that's a very spicy episode of Pimp My Ride that isn't it? So he's now able to go mobile, so he's able to collect on an even greater scale. The US Is in the war by this point. The fact that he was able to do this saved thousands of lives of Allied troops. Wow. He's a phenomenally important person in this. But history is going to intervene. In April 1941, very soon after he had joined the American Red Cross, Charles Drew quit. The story goes that he quit because they had made the decision that they were not going to be collecting blood from black donors, which is scientifically nonsense. Okay. There is no. There are blood types. That's really important. And some of that has been associated with ethnic groups, which is why, if you are from an ethnic minority in Britain, I really would encourage you to be a blood donor, because there's never enough in terms of supply. But when we're talking about plasma and general blood transfusion, race does not come into it at all. And he spoke out against this publicly many, many times. Fairly shortly thereafter, the American red Cross in 1942 said that it would be collecting blood from black donors, but it would be kept segregated. Oh, my God. It's important to point out, by the way, that they did issue an apology in 2023. What? We're going on a better late than never principle. But also, actually, for my. I've read a lot of these sorts of apologies. This one's a relatively good one. So to their credit, they say today, the Red Cross stands firm in its dedication to diversity and inclusivity and resoundingly rejects hate, racism and bigotry of any kind. Unfortunately, this is the Sad bit. In 1950, he works a full day in the hospital. He does surgeries in the afternoon. He's the guest of honor at a dinner reception. He and three of his colleagues got into a car and were driving to a conference in Tuskegee, Alabama. He took over the wheel at five in the morning. He was extraordinarily tired and fell asleep at the wheel. He was taken to hospital. They knew who he was. That's how famous he was. He was treated in the basement because that is where you treat black patients in the day. And what I want to tell you about, just in terms of the context, you've already heard about the segregation and the things that he was having to fight. The reason why he wasn't able to go to medical school was because of a thing called the Flexner Report that had said lots of black medical schools were substandard and had resulted in a lot of them closing, which is why he ends up going to Canada. He was having to fight his way through all of this and so he's having to work twice as hard as every other doctor. And we already know the doctors work twice as hard as all of the rest of us. His daughters described him as a man in a hurry. This is all they ever saw of their dad, was him running around trying to help other people. Of course he was going to fall asleep at the wheel of the car. What strikes me about that as well is that he was famous enough to be recognized in the hospital and none of us had heard of him. I cannot believe you have dragged two idiot naughty schoolchildren in, Laura and I to learning something that is in stunned silence. Incredible work there. So, Sepadra, why do you think Dr. Charles Drew is the best medicine? Not only was he an amazing medical pioneer, but he brought an idea of collaboration as part of his philosophy for how he wanted to do medicine. He was anti racist to the bone. He knew that solidarity was the way forward with this. And it's important to point out he was a phenomenal teacher. Between 1941 and 1950, more than half of the black surgeons in the US who had qualified as surgeons studied under Charles Drew. It's a bad for everyone. Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation. It felt a really safe and welcoming space. After the yoga classes, I felt amazing. But soon that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker. A journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders. I don't have my passport, I don't have my phone, I don't have my bank cards. I have nothing. The passport being taken, the being in a house and not feeling like they can leave. World of secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry, where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realize. And it's like this secret that's there. I wanted to believe that, you know, that whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't understand. Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice and for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future, to bring it into the light and almost alchemize some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power world of secrets. Season 6 the Bad Guru Listen wherever you get your podcasts all right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Partisan. Partisan. It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites too. I just got it for 50 off, so how about a Cosmopolitan or a Mistletoe Margarita? I'm thirsty. Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength and wow, it's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off. Tis the season to be jollier. Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker Bartisian. Pick up your phone and shake it to get $50 off any cocktail maker. Yes, you heard me. Shake your phone and get 50 off. Don't delay.