From dizziness to chronic pain, the overstretched health service is faced with increasing numbers of patients with symptoms that defy a medical explanation. They are often subject to repeated tests and treatment yet their illness persists. Laurie Taylor is joined by Monica Greco, whose research suggests the practice of patient choice ensures that many such patients get worse rather than better.

Also on the programme, Róisín Ryan-Flood, the author of Lesbian Motherhood: Gender, Families and Sexual Citizenship, talks about the growing numbers of lesbians choosing to have children by donor insemination and the evolution of new definitions of family. Show less