Health - a universal obsession. Everyone wants to be well, but methods of achieving this change according to fashion and the latest theories. In the first of a four-part series, Death Is an Optional Extra, Ian Kennedy , Professor of Law and Medical
Ethics at King's College,
London, travels to America to examine the$600 billion health care industry, where malpractice suits are common and defensive medicine, like Caesarian births, are on the increase. What is the reality behind the myths of American medicine? - expensive, obsessed with technology, able to keep the rich alive, but with infant mortality rates to match the Third World. Last year
Americans spent$9 billion on heart by-pass surgery, despite recent findings that 14 per cent of it was unnecessary, and 30 per cent was questionable. Nearly 2,000 Americans actually die each year from unnecessary coronary surgery. Producer Ian Paul
Series producer Amanda Theunissen 0 TELETEXT SUBTITLES: page 888