Health-Medical Documentary hosted by Robert Winston, published by BBC in 1998 - English narration
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The BBC's first major TV series on human biology is an incredible journey through the most complex biological mechanism on earth, from conception to the unchartered territory of death and beyond.
This astonishing series takes us on a journey breathtaking twists of the most complex biological mechanism on earth - the human body. The latest imaging techniques allow us to travel through veins, down fallopian tubes and around the brain, to understand how our bodies work.
The Human Body takes us on a journey from birth to death using time-lapse photography, computer graphics and various state-of-the-art imaging techniques to explore every aspect, every nook and crevice of the human body in its various stages of growth, maturity and eventual decay.
All the stages, pains of adolescence, complex activity of the brain and eventually death shown in steps with detailed explanation. The Human Body took around two and a half years to make and involved researchers liaising with medical institutes and scientific organisations around the world.
Presented by Dr. Robert Winston, one of the UK's leading fertility experts, it begins with a huge array of statistics about what we can hope for in the course of our lives. For example, did you know that the average person spends three and a half years eating, six months on the toilet and 12 years watching TV?
The series looks not only at the mechanics of the human body, but the emotions too because these are what make us human. It follows the lives of individuals at the key stages in the human life cycle: birth, childhood, adolescence, pregnancy, adulthood, old age and death. The Human Body allows viewers gain knowledge and understand the human body than ever before.
Director & Series Producer: Richard Dale ; A BBC / The Learning Channel Co-Production
7) The End of Life
Our bodies are built from organised colonies of cells. In an incredible act of harmony and organisation, they work together. We go about our daily lives hardly ever considering our final fate. We seldom witness death. We are reluctant to face up to our own mortality, to confront the truth that in the midst of life, we are in death. In this final part of the story of the human body, we take a difficult journey to see what happens when this mass of biological activity ceases to be, to see how all the previous ages of our existence are undone in the final act. The processes of death in the human body are remarkable. This is what it would look like if you could see the human body cool down over 24 hours. Long before we stop breathing, our brain may die, our personality lost for ever. Even in death, the body reveals remarkable secrets.
The last in a 7-part series in which Robert Winston looks in detail at the life of the human body in chronological order from birth to death. This part is about the dying process. One of the central features is the story of Herbie, a man dying of a fatal tumour in his stomach, who allows his final few weeks alive and the moment of his death to be filmed. People who have had near-fatal heart attacks describe the experience and a heart bypass operation is shown. Other people describe near-death experiences, the features of which are being mirrored by a team of scientists experimenting with using a powerful centrifuge to induce loss of consciousness. The series ends with the death of Herbie and his funeral. In agreeing to have his last moments filmed as he lies dying in a hospice, Herbie has perhaps achieved a deserved immortality through this programme.
