One in every 1,000 pregnancies in Britain has a spine or brain defect like spina bifida. Thirty years ago, actress Ruth Madeley was one of them. Despite having spina bifida herself, it is a condition she doesn't fully understand. In this programme, Ruth sets out to discover why she has it, whether it could have been prevented and what it means for her future.\n\nRuth meets the lord campaigning for a change in the law that he says could prevent thousands of birth defects. And she discovers that a pioneering surgery could offer a different future for babies diagnosed with spina bifida, by operating on them before they are even born. She discovers how this surgery was invented, meets the families whose lives it has changed and follows the team of British surgeons preparing to perform this extraordinary foetal surgery in the UK for the very first time. But Ruth also examines attitudes in Britain today and asks whether we should change the way we see disability.
Source: BBC 2
2020: What's The Matter With Tony Slattery?
Tony Slattery was one of the most gifted TV comedians of the late 80s and early 90s. One of the Cambridge Footlight set that included Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson, ...
10-02-2025
BBC 2
Life Story: A Horizon Special
It's 1951. There's a race on, and two of the brightest and brashest young men in Cambridge are determined to win it. The prize is glittering. Eternal fame, glory and almost cert ...
11-12-2024
BBC 2
2020: Hubble: The Wonders Of Space Revealed
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of its launch, this film tells the remarkable story of how Hubble revealed the awe and wonder of our universe and how a team of daring astronau ...
04-11-2024
BBC 2
2020: Pluto: Back From The Dead
The incredible story of how Pluto has been propelled from an unremarkable ball of ice on the edge of the solar system to a world of unimaginable complexity - where some form of ...
28-10-2024
BBC 2
2018: 3. How To Build A Time Machine
Time travel is not forbidden by the laws of nature, but to build a time machine, we would need to understand more about those laws and how to subvert them than we do now. And ev ...
07-08-2019
BBC 2
2021: 1. Horizon Special: The Vaccine
The extraordinary inside story of the biggest scientific challenge of our age – following a small band of vaccine scientists around the world who took on Covid-19 and ulti ...
07-07-2021
BBC 2
2018: 7. A Week Without Lying - The Honesty Experiment
Deception is an integral part of human nature and it is estimated we all lie up to nine times a day. But what if we created a world in which we couldn't lie? In a radical experi ...
03-02-2022
BBC 2
2021: Coronavirus Special - What We Know Now
In this third Horizon special, Dr Chris Van Tulleken is joined by his brother Xand and Dr Guddi Singh to take us through the latest developments and answer current concerns.\n\n ...
05-03-2021
BBC 2