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Health Check: 21/06/2010

21/06/2010

BBC World Service - Health Check, 21/06/2010

Henrietta Lacks; new definitions of psychiatric conditions; premature babies and pain.

Henrietta Lacks – how her cells changed medicine forever; the effects of changes to how psychiatric conditions are defined and new research in premature babies' response to painful procedures.

One woman born in the 1920s is the source of trillions of cells used in medical research all over the world. Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 from a virulent cervical cancer. A sample of those cancer cells was taken at the time and the way they behave has changed medical science forever – contributing to everything from the polio vaccine to drugs for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.  Rebecca Skloot has spent over ten years researching Henrietta and her extraordinary legacy. 

In mental health care staff constantly have to make difficult decisions about what constitutes everyday behaviour and what counts as a psychiatric illness.  One tool to help is the Diagnostic and Statistical manual of psychiatric disorders, otherwise known as the DSM. It’s a good barometer of where worldwide thinking in psychiatry is heading. It’s updated every decade or so and the proposed revisions for the latest edition have been announced.  “Hoarding” makes it in as new condition, and there’s even the new idea of diagnosing conditions before people have all the symptoms.  Asperger’s syndrome is earmarked for removal. Professor Terry Brugha from the University of Leicester and American psychiatrist Daniel Carlat discuss the implications of the proposed changes. 

Premature babies have to undergo invasive but essential procedures, sometimes as often as ten times every day.  But it’s very hard to know how much pain these procedures cause.  New research has found that babies who were born prematurely respond differently to painful procedures than full term babies.  Dr Rebecca Slater from University College London explains the research and its implications.

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