Produced and directed by Helen Thomas; series producer Anne Laking BBC/TLC co-production, 2003
Bodysnatchers is a series of three documentaries that brings infectious diseases to prime-time television. The focus of the programmes is on the visually dramatic: the fly-on-the wall recounting within episode one of a volunteer swallowing a taenia cyst (with a glass of red wine), allowing the tapeworm to grow to maturity, passing it, and laying the worm out on the lawn will long linger in the memory. Probably because they lend themselves to good pictures, parasitic infections are the subject of two of the three episodes.
Episode one also tells the stories of African children with ascaris infection and individuals (mostly westerners) with neurocysticercosis, diphyllobothriasis, microfilaria infection, and zooparasite infestations including leach, bot fly, and the candiru fish of the upper Amazon, which have the alarming habit of migrating up the urethra of bathers.
In episode two, we see more of the people who have to endure the burden of parasite infections, with explorations of malaria, leishmaniasis, sleeping sickness, and dracunculiasis. There is also a fascinating section on how infection with ascaris seems to benefit some patients with severe inflammatory bowel disease and asthma.
Episode three attempts a thumbnail sketch of the world of bacterial and viral infections. This is perhaps the least satisfactory of the programmes because the treatment is so superficial. Several minutes are devoted to tuberculosis, with the worldwide burden of disease and the problem of drug resistance receiving mentions. However, bubonic plague, a rare disease compared with tuberculosis, gets equal billing. Among the viruses, the programme tells us about those media darlings Lassa, Ebola, West Nile, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). In the voice over, SARS is described—with wildly inaccurate hyperbole—as having “spread to every corner of the globe”.
Although vividly photographed, the educational value of these documentaries is diminished by their failure to give a true picture of the burden of infectious diseases. The viewer will find nothing about pneumonia and diarrhoea here. Remarkably, HIV-1, the most important infectious killer of all, does not even warrant a mention. For grabbing and retaining the viewer's attention, however, this series can hardly be faulted.