Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

Radio 4,21 Aug 2013,26 mins

The Defiance of Science

Face the Facts

Available for over a year

Face the Facts investigates a commonly used medicine, licensed for use since the 1980s, that may have caused thousands of unnecessary deaths in UK hospitals until its suspension 2 months ago. It's one of the most common sights in a hospital - a drip hanging from a stand by a patient's bed. We hear from doctors who have been calling for a ban on one type of starch-based drip since the late nineties and how their concerns were drowned out by supporters of the drug including a German doctor, who, we now know, falsified scientific research to support the use of the drug.

Programme Website
More episodes