Channel 5 - Extraordinary People: The Woman With Half a Body
Monday 14th November 2005


Visit: http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... womanwith/ The full write up from the site is below


Information

Rosemarie Siggins from Pueblo, Colorado, is a car nut: she's been into cars, trucks and all things automotive since the age of three. She also has only half a body – but she doesn't let her disability stop her from rebuilding a 1968 Mustang which she plans to race. Born with a rare genetic condition that meant her legs were deformed and without sensation, Rose had her legs amputated as a young child. However, she is determined not to let this get in the way of living her life, even giving birth to a healthy son seven years ago. And when people ask her how she deals with her disability, she replies: "This is my reality. This is my normal."

Rose is determined to live as a full and normal a life as possible. She uses her arms and hands to get around, travelling on a skateboard at times and driving a specially adapted car which she manoeuvres using hand controls. She is grateful to her parents for making the difficult decision to have her legs amputated, rather than putting her in a wheelchair. Rose also chose not to wear the prosthetic legs her school wanted her to use, a decision which was supported by her parents.

Fiercely independent, she can't imagine life in a wheelchair, and enjoys the freedom of being able to get around by herself. "I can do everything everybody else can do," she says. "I just do it a little bit differently." Rose also explains how her parents avoided using words like disabled, handicapped and different to describe their daughter. "My definition of handicapped as I was growing up was someone who can't. I can."

In 1999 Rose married Dave, who she had met two years earlier. When Rose learned that she was pregnant, she received little support from the medical community since nobody with her genetic condition had ever given birth before. Dr Wolfson was the only doctor not to recommend an abortion, but did warn Rose and Dave that her extraordinary and ground-breaking pregnancy was putting her life on the line. A caesarean was performed at the top of her uterus, a more dangerous method of delivery, and a healthy boy named Luke was born. Rose recalls looking at her baby's feet and thinking: "He's complete; he's fine." Dr Wolfson considers Rose's pregnancy a miracle – as does Luke's proud mother.

The joy of Luke's birth was followed by tragedy when Rose's mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Rose's mother had held the family together, and Rose felt that her support system had disappeared. She and Dave moved back to the family home to take care of her father, who has Alzheimer's, the onset of dementia and schizophrenia; and her 29-year-old brother Jimmy, who has a mental age of eight and is prone to violent outbursts. "My mom didn't give up on me, and that's what she taught me," says Rose firmly. "So I don't give up on them."

Life at home is hard: Jimmy's outbursts have become more frequent as he struggles with his mother's death, and Dave is feeling the strain as his wife devotes her emotional energy to Luke and the family.

Trouble at home isn't the end of Rose's worries: her own health is now a cause for concern. Thirty years of walking on her hands has impacted Rose's arms, shoulders and joints and she is facing up to the fact that she may have to give in and use a wheelchair. "Your arms were not meant to do this," she explains. "My arms are my life-source; I rely upon them. I love feeling around me."

Rose has lived her whole life weathering the stares of strangers and tries to protect her son from the cruelty of children by talking to his friends about her disability. She's had to learn from a young age that not everybody is going to accept her as she is: "That's what I had to learn when I was very young: maybe I won't be accepted and be beautiful on the outside, but the one thing I can do is be beautiful on the inside. I'm a one of a kind, one in a million – and they won't forget me."











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Channel 5 - Extraordinary People: The Real Rain Man
Monday 27th February 2006


Visit: http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... e/rainman/ The full write up from the site is below


Information

Fifty-four-year-old Kim Peek is arguably the world's most famous savant and the inspiration behind the Oscar-winning film, Rain Man. He was diagnosed as mentally retarded at birth by a neurologist who spared him five minutes on his way to a golf game, and his parents were advised to place him in an institution. But his father, Fran, refused to give up on him and under his care Kim has developed a memory that, without equal, has made him a household name in the USA.

Described as "a living Google", Kim is a confounding mix of disability and brilliance that has baffled neurosurgeons. Most savants have only one dominating interest, but Kim seems to soak up everything: from sport to politics and even the minutiae of the British monarchy. But his gifts come at a price. Now nearly 80, Fran still looks after his son who needs help with all aspects of everyday life.

They have lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, since Kim was born. Its library is his favourite place in the world and he spends many hours there devouring books two pages at a time, often finishing as many as eight in a day. The programme follows Kim and Fran as they leave their home town in an effort to find out everything they can about Kim's remarkable brain while they are still together.

We follow father and son as they travel down the coast to San Francisco, where some of the world's foremost neuroscientists are waiting to meet him. They soon establish that Kim is a mega savant: his memory is not just deep, it's wide. Perhaps predictably, his intelligence test results are widely erratic as standardised tests do not really encompass his unique abilities. But vastly more interesting are the results of his brain scan. Using the latest technology, doctors at the city's university examine Kim's brain in detail and discover that he is missing the connection between its left and right side. The way it has rewired itself to compensate may account for his extraordinary talents.

Barry Morrow, the creator of Rain Man, met Kim in 1984 and is still a close friend of the family. "I was absolutely flabbergasted that such a human being existed", he says. "I could not get this man out of my mind". Rain Man didn't just win awards; it changed Kim's life forever. Previously unable to make eye contact with anyone, the film put him in the public spotlight. He now spends much of his life appearing in front of audiences across America with his father, where he astounds people with his incredible range of knowledge and his ability to calculate the day of the week of any given date. The one thing he finds difficult is abstract maths.

Kim now enjoys meeting people and loves showing off what he can do. One of his favourite tricks is to ask someone for their date of birth, and then reel off the days of the week on which they were born, have their birthday this year, and will turn 65 and retire. At the end of the programme, he and Fran travel to England to demonstrate his skills to an audience of students at Oxford University. It is their first ever trip abroad, and Kim wows the crowd with his knowledge and personality. "I wasn't supposed to make it past 14," he says. "And here I am, at 54, a celebrity."











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Channel 5 - Extraordinary People: The Seven Year Old surgeon
Monday 20th March 2006


Visit: http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... yosurgeon/ The full write up from the site is below


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“Today is a great day for science!”

This astonishing film follows 12-year-old Akrit Jaswal as he researches cures for cancer in his Delhi laboratory, which was set up by his proud parents. We see him jetting to the UK to meet top British scientists, who give their verdicts on the young genius, as well as psychologists who assess the effects these achievements could be having on his childhood. Akrit comes from a small village in northern India. He is thought to have an IQ higher than Einstein; at three, he was reciting Shakespeare. At seven, dressed in surgical garb that swamped his tiny frame, the precocious youngster performed his first surgical operation, declaring, "Today, I am very much happy to have an opportunity to serve the poor community."

This real-life Dexter became obsessed with medicine at an early age. He memorised medical books and witnessed surgeries, experimenting on animals at home in Himachal Predesh. "We went to the poultry farm, bought a live chicken, he dissected it, and after, we ate it for dinner," says his mother, Raksha Kumari Jaswal. As word of the young prodigy spread, villagers flocked to their home, seeking advice or just a glimpse of the boy. He was idolised and revered as a god, much to his discomfort. But Akrit did begin to treat some of the hordes who gathered on his doorstep.. He consulted his textbooks, discussed the cases with established doctors and prescribed medicine for more than a thousand people - including a man suffering from a brain disorder.

Akrit first gained celebrity status at the age of seven, when he successfully performed an operation to separate the fused fingers of a girl a year older than him. He taught students ten years his senior and became India’s youngest-ever Indian university student.

His father, Jaswal, believes he possesses the mind of a master surgeon. Jaswal encouraged him and spent years badgering the local authorities to give his son the opportunities he deserved. Although he was maligned by the Indian media for isolating his son from other children, living his failed medical dreams through Akrit and parading him before television and news crews, Jaswal dismissed his critics as "fools."

However, Akrit’s progress came at a price: frustrated with the perceived lack of support for his gifted son, Akrit’s father became depressed and left the family home last year, telling him not to get in touch until Akrit had found a cure for cancer. Adored by his self-sacrificing mother and treated as a genius, Akrit has no doubt he will do this.

But is Akrit just a big fish in a small pond? Word of Akrit’s achievements has spread, and our filmmakers are present when he is invited to spend two weeks at Imperial College, London. There he will meet potential mentors and IQ experts, who will test his skills and introduce him to the reality of lab work.

Once in the UK, Akrit is introduced to research biologist Dr Mustafa Diamgoz and his colleague, consultant Anup Patel. They are astounded by Akrit’s knowledge and amused by his impudence. Akrit is falling over himself to impress; Mustafa suspects that the boy misses the influence of his father, and is used to never being contradicted.













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RunTime: 46:44
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Channel 5 - Extraordinary People: The 46 Year Pregnancy
Monday 27th March 2006


Visit: http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... pregnancy/ The full write up from the site is below


Information

This astonishing documentary examines two extraordinary and frightening pregnancies. A 75-year-old Moroccan woman gives birth to a “stone baby”, 46 years after it was conceived, and a British woman describes her ectopic pregnancy, in which her baby developed in the stomach lining and was delivered two months early – at odds of around 60 million to one.

In 1955, in a small village outside Casablanca, Zahra Aboutalib went into labour. Forty-eight hours later, the baby still hadn’t shifted and Zahra was rushed to hospital. There, Zahra looked on as a young woman died in agony on the operating table. There was only one thing for it; she turned and fled in panic, convinced she would suffer the same fate. Days of excruciating pain followed, and then the pains faded out. In Moroccan culture, it is believed that babies can live inside a woman’s womb to protect her honour and Zahra took on this “sleeping baby” myth. Zahra cast the pregnancy from her mind and many decades passed, during which time she adopted three children and became a grandmother.

Then one day when Zahra was 75 the agonising pains returned with a vengeance. Dr Taibi Quazzani assumed Zahra’s swollen stomach indicated an ovarian tumour and sent her for scans. Nothing could have prepared Zahra for the results: the mass inside her stomach was no less than a calcified baby. All those years ago, the baby had developed outside the womb and fused with Zahra’s internal organs, and unable to be born, had died. To shield itself from infection from this “foreign body”, the body developed a layer of hard calcified material around the dead baby. Zahra’s foetus had developed in her fallopian tubes as an ectopic pregnancy and she had been carrying a miniature mummy inside her for 46 years. Most ectopic pregnancies end in miscarriage or a termination, as they are the leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths, but Zahra’s baby had defied all odds and although dead, it had been accepted as just another organ.

The operation to remove the calcified foetus was a risky one. Over the decades it had fused with Zahra’s abdominal wall and internal organs. How Zahra had managed to survive these years is anybody’s guess, but she was lucky once more and got through the operation. She had even been lucky to run from the hospital. Without the required scanning technology, the doctors responsible for Zahra’s baby would have opened her up for a Caesarian section unaware of the baby’s positioning, and would probably have cut through the umbilical cord, killing both Zahra and her baby.

There are around 300 cases like this reported, but Zahra’s calcified baby spent the longest time in the womb.

We also follow the amazing story of Suffolk woman Jane Ingram. She and her partner had two children each from their previous marriages, but wanted at least one between them. They were delighted – if slightly bowled over – when they discovered Jane was expecting twins. But one night during the pregnancy Jane awoke bleeding heavily and in such pain she feared she was dying. She worried that she had miscarried, but the hospital reassured her that both babies were fine.

The blow came when the doctors told her she was expecting a third child, but this one was developing in the fallopian tubes. Ectopic pregnancies such as this almost always lead to the baby’s death. If the tubes ruptured, Jane could die as well; specialist Dr Davor Jurkovic advised her to have all three babies induced two months early.

As the doctors had feared, Jane’s fallopian tube ruptured on the operating table. If this had happened at home she could have been dead within half an hour. The two babies inside the womb, Olivia and Mary, were delivered safely…followed by Ronan, the ectopic child.

Astonishingly, almost six years later, the triplets are happy, healthy and as normal as six year olds can be.











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Channel 5 - Extraordinary People: The Boy with the Incredible Brain
Monday 23rd May 2005


no link, sorry


Information

documentary about 26 year-old Daniel Tammet, who they're billing as a "British Rain Man". He learnt how to speak Icelandic in 15 hours, can recite pi to 22514 places, and can tell you the day of the week on any given date in the last 100 years.

One of few known savants in the world, Daniel is different because he can explain how he does it, unlike the Raymond Babbitt character played by Dustin Hoffman. Scientists believe he could unlock the door to autism and to memory recall in everyone.













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Channel 5 - Extraordinary People: The Girl Who Makes Miracles
Monday 03rd April 2006


Visit: http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... pregnancy/ The full write up from the site is below


Information

Audrey Santo is no ordinary teenager. OK, she lies in her lurid pink bedroom all day. Nothing unusual about that. But above her bed is a window; a peephole allowing passing pilgrims to gaze upon her. Audrey has been in a coma since she was three, and is heralded as the world’s most famous living stigmatic and faith healer. She has apparently cured thousands of their ailments and terminal illnesses. Is this really God’s work or is there another, stranger explanation?

In August 1987, at her home in Worcester, Massachusetts, three-year-old Audrey Santo walked into a swimming pool and fell into a coma. She was diagnosed with akinetic mutism, meaning that her body functions just enough to keep her alive but should not respond to external stimuli, and her brain has been irreversibly damaged. Doctors did not expect her to survive more than a few weeks, but her mother Linda devoted her life to caring for her at home. Audrey far outlived the doctors’ expectations, and while she’s lain still for all these years it cannot be said that her body is unresponsive. The family’s physician, Dr John W Harding, considers this to be “a bit of a miracle.”

Sustained by her Catholic faith, Linda searched for answers to her daughter’s illness. Her quest for a cure took her 4,000 miles away to the religious shrine of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared to a group of children in 1981. Linda reports that one of these ‘child visionaries’, Ivan Dragicevic, came to the shrine and received a message from the Virgin Mary to pass on to Audrey. Audrey became animated and tried to speak, apparently communicating with the Virgin Mary, before suffering a heart attack. Linda believes that at this point her daughter made a choice between her own life and a life of helping others, and became what the Catholic Church terms a ‘victim soul’. She attributes her daughter’s heart attack to the shrine’s proximity to a large abortion clinic.

Back at home, Audrey developed stigmata on her hands and feet and, astonishingly, religious icons in the Santo house began to weep oil. Audrey thus began her ‘career’ as one of the most famous miracle workers in the world. As word spread, more and more people came to visit Audrey from around the globe. Audrey’s visitors became increasingly obsessive, touching her hands and hair and stealing pieces of her carpet. By the early 1990s, demand for an audience with Audrey had become so great that devotees would fill football stadiums. In response, Linda and a group of devotees formed a ministry and set up an HQ with donations. Audrey had become a religious icon - and a business, complete with a board of directors to filter out media attention.

The bishop of Worcester expressed concern at the phenomenon, saying, “All this bespeaks a real spiritual hunger.” The Santo family became regular targets for sceptics, such as paranormal investigator Joe Nickell, who contributes to this programme. In 1991 the Vatican ordered its own investigation, which proved inconclusive. In the face of mounting criticism, Linda allowed the producers of this documentary to have samples of the oil scientifically tested. The tests reveal that the oil is not holy oil or ‘chism’ - comprised, according to the Bible, of olive oil, frankincense and myrrh - but regular kitchen olive oil.

However, the pilgrims are not deterred by these results one bit. They continue to flock to the Santos' home, still believing it to be a shrine where miracles happen and people are cured. Some of Audrey’s followers go as far as to equate the phenomenon to living in the time of Jesus Christ. We meet six-month-old Billy Theriault, whose spinal muscular atrophy is threatening to kill him before he is two years old. His parents bring him to Audrey for a blessing in the hope that a miracle can save their son in the face of apparent medical hopelessness.

The emotional power evoked in people who come to Audrey is undeniable, but is there any evidence that she can actually effect healing? Linda is hailing her daughter as a living saint; a claim that offends catholic protocol. Is Linda deluding herself in order to cope with the tragic situation her daughter is in?

Whatever her motivation, Linda is undeniably devoted to her daughter as we see when Audrey becomes desperately ill in August 2005 - around the anniversary of the accident. For Linda, the truth is there for those who want to believe it.











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Channel 5 - Extraordinary People: The Boy with a tumor for a face
Monday 10th April 2006


http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... tumourboy/ an extract from the site is below.


Information

*PLEASE NOTE* This program contains scenes of surgery some viewers may find disturbing.


This astonishing film follows up on the case of Novemthree, the boy whose face was almost completely obscured by colossal tumours by the age of two. He is settling back into a life after groundbreaking surgery and beginning to regain both physical and emotional confidence, but a year on, the tumours are growing again. More surgery might kill him, but leaving the tumours unchecked is a fatal decision. Novemthree's life hangs in the balance.












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Channel 5 - Extraordinary People: The Couple With 27 Children
Monday 17th April 2006


http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... le/family/ The Full write up from this site is below


Information

This is the story of Jeanette Murphy, Supermum. The 53 year-old from Atlanta, Georgia is a full-time carer who has adopted 23 children with special needs on top of her own four birth children. Remarkably, the family of twenty-nine all live under one roof.

Jeanette and her husband claim they felt a calling to help children with special needs. Jeanette first became interested in mental disability in her teens when she became friends with a Down’s Syndrome boy who lived on her road. The experience inspired her to work as a counsellor in a home for disabled adults, and it was there that she met her husband, John, a nurse. John shared her dream of bringing children into their family and providing them with a safe and loving home. “We found that the people we were looking after had already been raised and had picked up bad habits that we couldn't change. We wanted to reach out to them when they were younger,” says Jeanette.

In 1983, when they already had two biological children of their own, the Murphys adopted Shannon. 5-year-old Shannon was severely brain-damaged and hyperactive; she was extremely demanding and needed constant care. Nevertheless John and Jeanette felt encouraged to take on more children, including sweet-natured “family favourite”, baby Jonathan, who had Down’s Syndrome and had been wrongly diagnosed as blind. After that, the church adoption services contacted them every year with details of another child, and the Murphy family grew steadily. Adoption centres soon started referring parents who were reluctant to abort but unable to cope with disabled babies to the couple.

In the film, John and Jeanette’s birth children are asked how they felt about the idea of the ever-expanding family. Not that they had much choice; the Murphy children had to accept each adopted child in order to fulfil their parents’ dreams. “I never felt neglected,” says Shaun, the oldest of the children. “I never felt they weren’t paying enough attention to the biological children... It was like a team effort.” The children contribute to everyday life in the home, which the Murphys hope will aid in the development of their social skills.

Looking after such a huge family is obviously no mean feat. The monthly food bill is around £9000 and it’s a 24/7 job. The extended family has to manage on community donations and disability payments. Their house is cramped, with bunk beds housing up to four children per room. But the Murphys’ unwavering life ethic has enabled them to develop a unique approach to caring for the mentally disabled. They are convinced that a loving family home is the best possible environment in which to nurture the potential of these children, many of whom have physical as well as mental disabilities. They consider it vital to teach the children real life skills rather than “pampering and babying.” One of their daughters, Angel, is blind and has a prosthetic leg, but she is in charge of bath time and helps to care for the other children. She was a frightened child when she arrived, but “now she’s fearless,” Jeanette proudly explains. “Our goal is for the kids to eventually get jobs and marry. If we ever have enough money we want to build a second house for the older kids, where they can live semi-independently.”

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows at the Murphy’s house. Behind the family’s daily life, concern over the children’s health always lurks. Down’s Syndrome is accompanied by heart defects, and most of the children were born with life-threatening conditions. The Murphys had a big scare when little Emily’s pacemaker stopped working. “Once you experience something like this, you know that bad things can happen,” says Jeanette. In 1990, baby Jonathan was diagnosed with leukaemia; he endured three years of chemotherapy and painful surgery before he died. “When you lose a child, it feels like you’ve lost a part of you,” says Jeanette. “I've sat through 14 heart surgeries for 13 kids panicking every time a doctor rushed down the hall. Five of our children have died – three as babies – and my world fell apart every time. They were all so precious.”

Not everybody approves of the Murphys’ methods, and some are determined to bring them down. “A lot of people think it’s impossible, so we must be doing something wrong,” explains Jeanette. When their son Cody’s biological mother handed him over as a baby, his grandparents decided that they wanted custody themselves. The ensuing legal battle and accompanying media circus put the Murphys in the spotlight, but the Court of Appeal ruled in their favour.

Some of the children, such as 20-year-old Amy, who has a part-time clerical job, may gain a degree of independence. Others will need more care as they get older, and some have declined dramatically. John and Jeanette won’t be around to supervise them forever, but for now, the Murphys put their faith in God and take it one day at a time.

Jeanette is optimistic about the future of her clan. “I am happiest when I see them helping one another, like the other day when Mia, who is ten, fell down and scraped her knee. Cody and Nathan, who are 14 and ten, brought her inside for a plaster. I see how much love they have every day.”












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RunTime: 46:54
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Channel 5 - Extraordinary People: Identical Quads
Monday 24th April 2006


http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... ple/quads/ The full write up from this site is below.


Information

Aphex Twin fans across the nation will run for the hills when then see this episode of Extraordinary People. The infamous video for the electro legend’s 1997 single "Come to Daddy" features millions of small children, all with a replica of Aphex’s grinning face between their shoulders. It’s terrifying. The dizzying grins are similar, but don’t fear; these little ladies are harmless.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a clone? Another human being with the same face, body and DNA as you? Well, imagine having three clones:a little gang of yourself. Imagine the scrapes you could get each other out of. Imagine the fun, the confusion, the noise. But imagine giving birth to four babies at once...now that could be slightly less enjoyable.

Steve and Allison Mathias married in 1997. They lived in family-friendly Lexington, South Carolina and like many other young couples they wished for a baby. Allison was delighted when she fell pregnant, but she got much more than she bargained for. Her belly swelled, and swelled, and swelled a bit more. For despite not undergoing fertility treatment, Allison was expecting four babies; a veritable litter. Because of her unusual situation, Allison was referred to a hospital in Columbia and placed under the charge of a specialist in high-risk pregnancy. But in February 2000 Allison gave birth to four absolutely identical baby girls, defying odds of one in ten million.

The girls were all born prematurely and with a low birth weight so their future looked precarious. But five years down the line they are all happy, healthy and endlessly entertaining. Alison informs us, "I have a leader; a – I hate to say – whiner; and then somebody who thinks she's the boss; and I have a teaser".

This film follows the Mathiases story from the surprise news of the pregnancy and the life-threatening birth to the day the girls start school. Throughout, passers-by stop Allison in the street to shriek, "Excuse me ma'am, are they for real?" In this mind-boggling film we see the four mini personalities in action - from leader Grace, Allison's firstborn, to the baby of the group Anna, with only 30 seconds between each birth. Allison thinks the girls fill the usual sociological roles of birth order, only in this case the births were just moments apart.

We hear all about the trials and tribulations of bringing up four babies at once. As well as the initial worry of getting the quads mixed up, the costs were immense and the Mathiases had to rely on family, friends and health insurance. Each girl had her own place at a special feeding table donated to the family by the church. At six months old, a $1000 worth of formula fed the girls for two weeks. The Mathias quads also went through 10 jars of food, 16 bottles and 32 nappies a day, and their weekly supermarket bill is $250. We also hear how Masters graduate Allison had to leave her job in a hospital to become a full time mother, and how the Mathiases cope when going on holiday with four rowdy girls asking "Are we there yet?" Not to mention the squabbles over who gets the front car seat, who sits by mum at the dinner table and who gets the biggest portions of macaroni cheese...

Identical twins are produced when one egg is fertilised by one sperm; sometime after fertilisation the egg splits into two halves. Identical quads are miraculously created when the two halves split again. They share 100% of the genes and they really are each other's natural clones.

Births of quadruplets have increased by some 400% since 1974 as the advent of IVF treatment has made multiple births far more common than ever before. But IVF can never produce identical multiples, making the Mathias clan an incredibly rare sight to see. There are estimated to be only 58 sets of identical quads in the world!

We’ll be joining the squawking little girl gang at a crucial time as they embark on their first day at school. This film captures the nerves of the quads and the confusion of the teachers as they head for their first day in class. We’ll also marvel at how incredibly close the sisters are as they help one another through one of the first big steps of their lives.

"My little babies are all grown up," Allison says, confessing that it will partly be a sad day. But surely she’ll be grateful for the peace. She later concedes that this is the place the girls will begin to show their own personalities, and she’s also looking forward to not hearing everything in four way stereo all day.











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Extraordinary People - The Musical Genius
25th September 2006


http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... calgenius/ The full write up from the site is below

http://www.derekparavicini.net/



Information

26-year-old Derek Paraviccini is completely blind and partly autistic; he can’t tell left from right or count to ten. Derek now lives in a RNIB home for the blind but despite his profound disabilities, his brain is a perfectly programmed musical computer.

Derek was born three and a half months premature. His twin sister didn’t make it, and Derek technically died three times in the hospital. Miraculously, the tiny baby pulled through but his eyesight was destroyed by an oxygen overdose; as a result, he developed an astonishingly acute sense of hearing. Autistic people are often attracted to patterns and repetition, which can lead to some of them developing great gifts in fields such as mathematics or music. “When areas of the brain aren’t being used for their normal function, they are recruited for other functions,” says autism expert Dr Simon Baron-Cohen. With no visual cues to distract him and little emotional or intellectual recognition, Derek’s mind is free to concentrate almost entirely on music. He lives in a world of sound.

The Paraviccinis were astonished when, at the age of two, Derek started playing the piano. When they took him to school for the blind, little Derek heard a piano in the hallway and lunged for it. He broke away from his parents, pushed the poor child who was having a lesson off the stool and began playing with frightening vigour – with his fingers, with his elbows, with karate chops and occasionally with his nose. A musical prodigy was born, but to this day experts are baffled as to how Derek’s genius can coexist with such severe disability.

The RNIB’s Dr Adam Ockelford took Derek under his wing and became his mentor; he is one of the few people Derek trusts implicitly. We see Adam accompany Derek as he travels to the University of Sheffield, translating the pitch of a train engine into notes as he travels. At the University, a group of sceptical music scholars test his musical brain by playing him a Basque lullaby which he has never heard before. Of course, Derek amazes his audience by instantly playing the whole song perfectly; Derek remembers every single piece of music he’s ever heard. He is a true savant.

Derek has the rare gift of universal perfect pitch, but the experts want to know exactly how many notes his brain can process. He is presented with a sequence of chords he has never heard before, played by an orchestra of 50 instruments; he still manages to repeat the sound by arpeggiating the chords.

Next, Derek is taken to Goldsmiths college where Professor Linda Pring fixes 32 electrodes to his skull in order to test how accurately and quickly his brain monitors sound. She plays him 64 musical phrases from Moonlight Sonata, half of which contain errors. His verbal responses are random, but his brain activity filters the wrong sounds with startling accuracy.

There’s no doubt that Derek has a gift, but can it really be called talent? Is he playing the piano with feeling or is he just a musical machine? Professor John Sloboda wants to measure Derek’s capacity for discerning emotion in music. When instructed, he can play a song in a happy or sad mood, but struggles when asked to play angrily; he merely growls over his playing. However, Jools Holland argues that the only way to judge is to listen to what Derek creates and the way he communicates to his audience. Derek is an exceptional musician because music is an extension of himself; he has an intuitive bond with the musical world.

Derek heads to Las Vegas. Here, he meets another musical savants named Rex Lewis-Clack, with whom he will duet in front of the biggest audience of his life. Will Derek rise to the challenge – and can he help the less experienced boy to play the concert of his life?

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Extraordinary People - The Musical Genius.avi  [349.38 Mb]

Extraordinary People - The 4 Year Old Who Ran 40 Miles
2nd October 2006


http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... rathonboy/ The Full Write up from the site is below



Information

“I love to run,” squeaks four-year-old Budhia Singh as his coach squashes him into a variety of muscle-stretching yoga positions. It’s 4am, a typical blazing, misty dawn in Orissa, and Budhia is preparing to run a half-marathon for the fifth time in seven weeks. Budhia is no ordinary four-year-old. Since the age of three he has been running twenty miles a day, and he is revered as a demi-god in his town. But is Budhia’s a story of exceptional talent or a darker tale of child exploitation?

Budhia was brought up by the railway tracks in Orissa; over a third the population of Orissa live in slums and the state has the highest child mortality rate in India. His mother earned £3 a month as a maid and her husband was an alcoholic. Her children were starving so she made the heartbreaking decision to sell Budhia to a peddlar, hoping he would go to a better home. He didn’t; he was beaten regularly by the peddlar. He was naked and wounded when salvation came in the form of Biranchi Das, a local Judo instructor who had built his own school, helping to pull children out of obscurity into sporting success. Biranchi and his wife, Gita, adopted Budhia, changing his life beyond recognition.

One day, Biranchi caught Budhia swearing at one of his instructors and as a punishment, commanded him to run around a track. Biranchi went out and forgot about the boy; he returned home six hours later and was distressed to see him still running. “This kid is beyond imagination and beyond science,” Biranchi says of his protégé, who he began grooming for Olympic stardom.

Biranchi coaxes the child into running almost twenty miles each day in the intense Indian heat. One of the most controversial aspects of his “sports scientific” training regime is that he doesn’t allow Budhia to drink any water while running. He believes it would weaken him, but Biranchi has no formal qualification in athletic training. Is Budhia being pushed too hard? Will his tiny body pay the price?

We follow Budhia as he travels to his first competitive event, a half-marathon in Delhi. Biranchi and Gita ensure that the 32-hour train journey is no excuse for Budhia to relax; he must train as usual, running up and down the narrow walkway. A media storm greets him in Delhi – it has emerged that, due to race regulations, Budhia may only run the lesser 6km race. After the race, Tim Hutchins, coordinator of the London Marathon, remarks that a four-year-old’s bone growth is not in any way ready for such gruelling athletic performances. “It’s such an absurd issue that it shouldn’t even be discussed,” he seethes. Orissa’s child welfare minister begins to take an interest, refuting Biranchi’s claim that he has Budhia’s best interests at heart.

Biranchi perseveres. He wants Budhia to make history, so his next plan is for the boy to run 70km – a marathon and a half – earning himself a place in the Limca Book of Records. “Every human craves honour and recognition,” he reasons. “He’s come a long way from obscurity…he needs to have official recognition.” Biranchi dismisses fears over the boy’s health, saying reverently, “If Budhia dies while running he’ll be a martyr. Orissa needs martyrs.” So Budhia trots off obediently in the 80° Puri heat flanked hundreds of followers, police escorts and medical backup. From his bicycle, Biranchi dangles a water flask in front of Budhia whenever he slows, but throughout his six-hour run he must not drink.

As Budhia breaks through his first, 32km wall of pain, he’s running through a political battleground. “I have not committed any crime by spotting Budhia’s talent and helping him run long distances,” insists Biranchi. “I am not putting any pressure on him. He is running on his own. I am ready to face those who are questioning my work.” Is Budhia, as doctors have claimed, “undernourished, anaemic and under cardiological stress”? What would the boy’s fate have been without Biranchi’s judo academy, the food and education he provides? Will Budhia’s bandy little legs carry him the whole 70km into the record – and what will be his fate if he fails?


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Comments: Contains pixelation during movement

Extraordinary People - The 4 Year Old who Ran 40 Miles.avi  [355.07 Mb]

UK - Channel 5 - Extraordinary People - The Girl who Survived Rabies
22nd January 2007


http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... le/rabies/



Information

*WARNING - contains scenes which some people may find upsetting*

It’s an understatement to say that Rabies is a killer. It’s one of our most ancient and deadly enemies; to die from Rabies is excruciating. Virtually no one ever survives it. For over a century, medical experts throughout the world have been searching for a cure – Over 50,000 people die from the disease each year and, without vaccination, it has proved to be 100 per cent fatal. The smallest bite, a drop of saliva from an infected dog or bat spells a death sentence and one of the most gruesome deaths imaginable.

Even today, all that doctors can do is take a step back and watch the virus take hold. Treatment generally consists of binding the patient up in a darkened room and waiting for the inevitable. This was the harsh reality that faced Dr Rodney Willoughby, a paediatrician from Wisconsin who was about to go down in history.

In the summer of 1995 Jeanna Giese, a high-school girl from Fond du Lac in Wisconsin, was at church with her parents when a bat flew in. She picked it up and took it outside, where it thanked her with a small bite. The bite looked like no more than a pinprick so Jeanna’s family weren’t worried, but Jeanna’s bat had been infected with rabies. The Gieses didn’t seek any medical attention, so the disease began its deadly work unopposed.

Rabies is a particularly evil disease because rather than travelling through the bloodstream, where the immune system could fight it, it works its way straight into the nerves. Three weeks later, Jeanna began to feel an almighty tingling in her arm. Her parents dismissed it as a trapped nerve but she soon began to experience flu-like symptoms – the virus was worming its way into her brain. When Jeanna complained of double vision, her parents finally took her to the hospital where her condition quickly deteriorated. All the usual tests came back negative. When Jeanna’s mother mentioned the bat bite, the doctors turned white. Could they really be seeing a case of rabies, in 21st-century America?

Jeanna was rushed to the children’s hospital. It was at this hospital, when Jeanna was already in the late stages of her disease, that Dr Willoughby encountered the case. If he wanted a miracle cure he was going to have to invent it himself. Unperturbed by the overwhelming weight of statistics against him, Willoughby worked against conventional medicine and the clock, searching frantically for anything that other experts may have missed or an experimental treatment that could be attempted. His breakthrough came when he realised that the brain of a rabies patient always remained intact after death. He concluded that the virus did not work by physically destroying the brain but by scrambling its messages. Thus, his revolutionary treatment was born: since he could not prevent the virus from scrambling the brain’s messages, he would stop them altogether by effectively taking the brain offline. Would Jeanna’s parents let Willoughby test his new treatment on their daughter?

No one wanted to give the Gieses false hope. The parents were informed that their daughter would die but that the hospital would like to test a treatment on her. Despite their distress, the Gieses agreed to allow Jeanna to be given the treatment so that somebody else might benefit in the future. In an attempt to buy her immune system time to fight the virus, Jeanna was put into a coma so deep that she was almost dead. At this stage of the disease, patients would normally have just hours to live, but Jeanna’s body was now being allowed days in order to begin an antibody response.

After seven days in the coma, Jeanna began to show signs of recovery. However, when tests showed that she was not responding to pain, Dr Willoughby worried that Jeanna may have become ‘locked in’ – saved from death only to become a living vegetable trapped for ever within the confines of her own mind. But, to everyone’s astonishment, Jeanna opened her eyes and focused on her mother’s face. She soon returned home. At first she couldn’t move or speak but she gradually regained normal function.

For the Gieses the nightmare was over, but for Willoughby and other experts trying to combat the disease, the real challenge was just beginning. Where scientists throughout history had failed despite lifetimes of research, how could one doctor from the American Midwest have succeeded in a matter of hours? Was Jeanna Giese’s survival a miracle or a cure? Only time would tell.




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Extraordinary People - The Girl who Survived Rabies.avi  [346.09 Mb]

UK Channel 5 - Extraordinary People - The Twin Within the Twin
Aired: 29th January 2007


http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... ithintwin/



Information

Ever since childhood, Sanjay had been self-conscious about his protruding belly. The little Bengali boy was teased for looking pregnant but he figured he was just unusually chubby. 36 years later, now a farmer, Sanjay arrived in hospital with a belly swollen to the extent that he truly did look like he was about to give birth.

As many as one in eight people begin life in the womb with a twin, but the majority of these twins are reabsorbed during the early stages of pregnancy. In the bizarre case of Sanjay, however, the legacy of his time in the womb was to haunt him into middle age and would almost cost him his life.

In May 1999 Sanjay was rushed to hospital with severe abdominal pains. Doctors assumed he had a gigantic tumour and decided to operate immediately, but they were in for a shock. As soon as the first incision was made, it became clear the medics were not dealing with a tumour at all; as gallons of pus gushed out, a bundle of bones in a human form emerged. This body complete with head, limbs, nails and hair was the half-formed body of Sanjay’s twin brother, who had been growing inside him for the last 36 years.

Dr Ajay Mehta recalls the surreal moment he realised what was inside Sanjay: “To my surprise and horror, I could shake hands with somebody inside.” Sanjay had suffered from an extremely rare condition called Foetus In Foetu, in which one twin envelops another in the womb. Sanjay’s brother had been living as a parasite in his body throughout his whole life, feeding from Sanjay’s blood supply. If doctors hadn’t operated, Sanjay would eventually have been killed.

Sanjay’s predicament represented the very extreme end of a wide range of conditions affecting twins in the womb. Cases like Sanjay’s only occur in one in 500 000 births, usually diagnosed in the womb or shortly after deliveries, but there are other, more common phenomena that can affect twin pregnancies. We witness startling footage of twins fighting for space and nutrients in the womb, even coming resorting to fisticuffs.

The documentary follows 20-year-old Brittany from Mississippi, who is five months pregnant with twins. After a difficult first few months of pregnancy, Brittany and her husband have discovered that their babies are suffering from twin to twin transfusion syndrome. TTTS is a devastating illness which affects one in seven identical twins who share a placenta and is caused by unequal distribution of blood. One twin can die from under-nutrition while the other gets too much blood and risks heart failure as it tries to support its sibling. A whopping 80 per cent of twins suffering from TTTS die in the womb or at birth.

The Mississippi couple face the devastating choice between prioritising mother or babies and, eventually, one of the babies. They are left with only one option to give their twins a chance. Despite the risks involved, Brittany must undergo risky laser surgery to correct the flow of blood from the placenta. One baby doesn’t survive the procedure and the other is born premature, managing to survive for only a few months.

This side of the Atlantic, Sharon and Russell Lever were told they were expecting twins in January 2003. The news was like a fairytale to them; Sharon had gynaecological problems and had resigned herself to the fact that she would never have babies. The couple’s happiness was short-lived, however. The doctors informed them that their twins were suffering from TTTS, an illness that could kill them in weeks.

Sharon realised something was wrong after 12 weeks when her belly swelled dramatically. Doctors informed the couple that their twins’ only chance of survival was for Sharon to undergo laser surgery. After a heartrending spell in hospital Sharon’s surgery was successful and she was able to return home with both twins intact – only to go into labour prematurely and face a second battle to save them. Luckily for the Levers, their twins survived and their hard-won bundles of joy, Hope and Esme, remind them of their amazing fortune every day.


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Extraordinary People - The Twin Within the Twin.avi  [369.52 Mb]

UK Channel 5 - Extraordinary People - The Boy who Sees Without Eyes
Aired: 29th January 2007


http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... thouteyes/



Information

Ben Underwood lives with his family in the suburbs of Sacramento, California where he attends his local high school. Like any other 14-year-old boy, he loves to play with his friends and chat to girls his age, with whom he seems popular. He looks like any other boy, until he removes his $4,600, hand-crafted eyes.

Ben is blind and, like other blind people, relies on some specialist equipment to survive. He uses talking computer software and a Braille machine to help with his homework. Ben does not have a guide dog, uses no stick, and does not even use his hands to aid his mobility.

Instead, he has developed something of a supersense: he is the only person in the world who navigates using clicks. As he walks, he makes a continuous clicking noise with his tongue. As these clicks echo around him, he is able to draw up a detailed mental plan of his surroundings and adjust his direction accordingly. So accurate is his technique that he is even able to go rollerblading on the street, negotiating narrow gaps between parked cars that even sighted children might find challenging. In fact, Ben’s mother, Aquanetta, finds that her son is far more attentive to the dangers of the road than his friends, always the first to move onto the pavement when a car approaches.

Ben first noticed his talent at the age of seven, when at summer camp. While it began as just a habit, Ben explains, he soon realised that it had potential benefits for navigation. He began to practise every day and developed the system to the point it is at today. It is the fact that Ben is entirely self-taught that is perhaps most astonishing and has led people to use the term ‘genius’ when referring to the boy.

Dr James Ruben, an ophthalmic surgeon who has worked with Ben for some time, could not believe what he saw when he first met the patient. “This can’t be possible,” he thought on spotting the blind boy sitting in his waiting room playing video games. But it was possible and Dr Ruben found himself working with a unique talent. Once he had accepted that Ben was truly blind, Dr Ruben was “flabbergasted” and shared the remarkable story with the local press. It was not long before the news rippled throughout national press and Ben soon found himself featuring in a photoshoot with America’s People magazine and appearing on the popular chat show, ‘Oprah’.

Throughout his experiences, Ben has found that everyone who meets him cannot believe their eyes. When he first joined his current school, most people did not even notice that he was blind. There appears to be nothing that his friends can do that Ben will not attempt and conquer. As one of his friends puts it: “It is shameful, being beaten by a blind man on a video game!”

According to Dr Ruben, one of the secrets behind Ben’s talent is his remarkable mother. Along with the rest of the family, Aquanetta makes no allowances for Ben’s blindness and treats him as if he can see. She also maintains a “no-limits” philosophy and grants her son the space and the freedom he needs to excel. Refusing to allow Ben to see her afraid or crying, Aquanetta believes that if she never appears to be feeling sorry for her son, he will never feel sorry for himself. But perhaps the most important factor in the development of Ben’s talent is the attitude of the boy himself. “Ain’t nothing wrong with me”, he insists.


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Extraordinary People - The Boy Who Sees Without Eyes.avi  [305.72 Mb]

All Extraordinary People topics merged, and thread cleaned.

thankyou so much for the autism videos - fantastic !!

Come on people we need to share this!

Im picking up 1-2 sources for the majoirty of them which is a shame given these human being are incredible.

(as is the pavvy crevis)

I should be able to reshare if it's necessary, ronson (provided I can find the CD's they're on and they're not corrupted) . If you're having real problems completing them give me a shout. Only if you really need to though because It'll slow down the amount of new links I can post and I have a bit of a backlog

UK Channel 5 - Extraordinary People - The Twins Who Share a Body
Aired 19th February 2007


Extraordinary People - The Twins Who Share a Body.avi  [368.25 Mb]




Information

http://www.five.tv/programmes/extraordi ... edforlife/

Although they are two completely separate people, these accomplished teens share a body and have just two arms and legs between them.

Born in 1990, the girls have been brought up in a small, tightly knit community in Minnesota, almost completely protected from prying eyes and inquisitive stares. To their friends and family, they are distinct people with very different personalities, needs, tastes and desires. But to the outside world they are a medical mystery – particularly given the fact that they can do virtually all the same things as their friends, including playing the piano, riding a bike, swimming and playing softball “Their personalities make them inspirational,” says their mother Patty. “They never give up; anything they want to do, they go out and do it.”

The medical world is keen to find out how two separate brains and nervous systems can work in such a perfectly co-ordinated way, but the twins and their family have always resisted non-essential medical tests. “The family want to treat them as though they are just like everyone else,” says Joy Westerdahl, the girls’ doctor, who admits that it is a mystery how their unique physiology functions.

As they enter adulthood, the twins are likely to leave the haven of their home town and face the wider world. In preparation for that time, they have taken part in this intimate documentary to show the world what it is like to be joined for life. The programme follows them as they pass their driving test and celebrate their 16th birthdays.

We also join them on a big summer trip to Texas. Here, they stay with family friend Tamara Vogt, whose own conjoined twins died as babies. Tamara is full of admiration for the pair. “They’ve given me strength from within that I didn’t even know I had,” she says. But even under the watchful eye of Tamara, this so-called holiday entails significant stress for the girls. They face stares from the outset, and are upset when, at a Major League baseball game, a news cameraman turns his camera on them. They let him film them but it ruins their day. “We don’t mind when people ask questions or talk to us, but we hate it when people take pictures and try to videocamera us,” they explain. “And we will throw a fit about it, and make them embarrassed.”

Despite the girls’ strong characters, their baseball-game encounter is a stark reminder of what lies ahead of them. How will the wider world react to two separate people joined in one body? And how will this reaction affect the girls?





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Pavy, I think this has to be the most mindboggling of all the the posts you've shared
Well, maybe not, but certainly up there.
Thank you very much

Thank you very much for these.

these are great, any recent ones?

No, I haven't seen any caps of this series

Channel 5 - Extraordinary People - Living with Half a Brain
Aired: 01st October 2007


Extraordinary People - Living with Half a Brain.avi  [351.08 Mb]


Information

http://www.tvthrong.co.uk/extraordinary ... -october-1

At the age of just three, six-year-old Cameron Mott developed a devastating and progressive brain disorder called Rasmussen’s encephalitis. This rare disease attacks the right side of the sufferer’s brain, causing a rapid decline in mental faculties and –if left untreated –eventually leading to partial paralysis. Cameron’s condition has left her with extreme epilepsy. Her daily life is plagued by sudden and frequent fits forcing her to wear a protective helmet at all times. She is only free from the fits for a precious 30 minutes at the beginning of every day, before she collapses and falls victim once more to the relentless cycle of seizures.

This film follows the Mott family as they travel from their home in North Carolina to the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute in Baltimore for a radical treatment. Cameron is about to undergo a complex operation called a hemispherectomy, which is the last resort for doctors treating children with her condition.

During seven hours of surgery, led by Dr George Jallo, chunks of the right side of Cameron’s brain are painstakingly removed. Though the operation is incredibly delicate and difficult, time is of the essence, since the cavity left in Cameron’s head fills with cerebral-spinal fluid at a rate of a teaspoonful every five minutes. Once surgery is over, Cameron is immobilised –any movement could dislodge the remaining half of her brain. For 48 hours, Shelley and Casey Mott cannot hold or hug their little daughter.

Just eight days after her radical treatment, Cameron pedals down the hospital corridor on a tricycle, laughing as she cycles. Her parents believe it is nothing short of a miracle and even her neurosurgeon is amazed by the little girl’s rate of recovery. “I always think that these children... are going to be dependent on their parents for the rest of their lives,” admits Dr Jallo.

However, surviving the operation is only the first hurdle for Cameron –her real challenge is yet to come. The effects of the surgery are similar to the results of a major stroke, so there is a chance that the entire left side of the little girl’s body could be permanently paralysed.

Incredibly, it is also possible that Cameron will make an almost complete recovery. At her age, the brain has a remarkable capacity to reorganise itself – with one side of the brain effectively taking over the functions of the other. All Cameron’s parents can do for now is wait and hope, but they remain confident that their daughter’s determination will see her through.

Elsewhere, in London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, 14-year-old epileptic Sean Goldthorpe has his brain connected to a machine. As Sean reads aloud, neurologist professor Helen Cross sends electric charges into the part of his brain that controls language. Sean stumbles and is unable to read further, becoming anxious and frustrated. This disquieting session is part of an invasive monitoring programme being used by Professor Cross to pinpoint the part of Sean’s brain causing his fits. It is an exhausting ordeal for Sean, but he is willing to go through with it if it will give him an opportunity to be seizure-free.

Professor Cross eventually discovers that Sean’s fits are emanating from his hippocampus – an area deep within the brain responsible for emotion and memory. As he grows older, the effects of Sean’s seizures are spreading to the language area at the back of his brain via a lesion. To stop his fits, Sean will need to have both of these areas of his brain removed, but doctors will only go ahead with the operation if they are certain that his memory and speech will not be damaged irreversibly. Sean’s parents now face an anxious wait as their son’s future lies in the doctors’ hands.



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Captured By: unknown

Happy Saturday Pavy. Thank you for a new story... these are top of my list
xxx

Channel 5 - Extraordinary People - The Boy who Lived Before
Aired: 05th February 2007


Extraordinary People - The Boy Who Lived Before.avi  [348.27 Mb]


Information

https://www.five.tv/programmes/extraord ... ywholived/

Ever since he could talk, Cameron has been telling stories of his life on Barra, a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, some 220 miles from his current home in Glasgow. He describes in detail his childhood on the island: the white house he lived in, the black-and-white dog he walked on the beach. He talks about his mother, seven siblings and his father, Shane Robertson, who died when he was run over by a car.

Nothing strange about all that. Except the fact that Cameron is only five years old now; his memories seem to be of a former life. Cameron’s stories have become increasingly more detailed since he first started telling them, and the shock of him insisting “I’m a Barra boy, I’m a Barra boy” has worn off a little. But his emotional attachment to his ‘Barra mum’ concerns his mother, and there’s clearly something going on in the poor kid’s head when he says, “My real barra dad doesn’t look left and right.” Intrigued by her enigmatic son, Cameron’s mother Norma has decided to investigate his claims.

Everyone who comes across Cameron is sceptical, but his stories are just so consistent. In her search to find a rational explanation for Cameron’s tales of his Barra childhood, Norma first visits psychologist Dr Chris French, editor of The Skeptic magazine. French suggests that Cameron might simply have acquired knowledge about Barra through TV or a family friend, and thus invented the stories himself.

Norma isn’t satisfied by this. Her next port of call is educational psychologist Karen Majors, who tells her that the way that Cameron describes his Barra world is similar to the way in which some children speak about imaginary places and people, except that Cameron really seems to believe that he has seen the things he describes first-hand; he also doesn’t seem to be able to control his ‘fantasy’ as other children do. Norma decides to investigate the possibility of reincarnation, contacting leading expert Dr Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia.

Tucker has investigated countless statements of reincarnation from children across the world. One of the cases he refers to comes from the American mid-West. Gus Taylor was 18 months old when he first began claiming to be his own grandfather returned to his family, saying “I used to be big and now I’m a kid again.” At four he was given a photograph album in which he identified his grandfather as a young boy in a group school photo as well as his first car. He startled his parents with knowledge they couldn’t comprehend him having about an aunt who had been murdered. Gus talks about falling through a porthole. Cameron also frequently alludes to falling through a hole from Barra; he is very calm about death because he believes we come back.

Norma always promised Cameron they could go back to Barra and with Dr Tucker’s encouragement, she takes her son to the island to see if any of his ‘previous life’ tales of the island can be verified. She hopes it will give him some perspective. Cameron has often described watching aeroplanes land on the beach from the family house – true to his memory, the beach does double as a runway. “Mummy, I recognise every single bit,” he whispers.

They set off to try to find the house Cameron has talked about, which must be located at the north end of the island to provide the view of the beach he has described. They fail to find it. A local historian calls them to say that he has information about the Robertsons, a mainland family, and the address of the house where they used to spend the summer during the 1960s and 1970s. The usual talkative and animated Cameron is suddenly nervous, and when they visit the house he’s strangely subdued. The house and its environs have a lot in common with Cameron’s descriptions over the last three years.

Initially, the trip seems to be a success, but Norma and Dr Tucker’s research into the Robertson family comes to nothing; the trail is running cold. On returning to the mainland, Norma visits a geneaologist to find out more about the Robertson family and discovers a lady called Gilly, who as a child would have frequented the summer house at the same time that Cameron claims he did in his former life. Will their meeting confirm a connection? And, crucially, will Norma and her son learn anything about the identity of Shane Robertson, the man Cameron claims was once his father?



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Technical Specs

Video Codec: XVID
Video Bitrate: 899 kb/s
Video Resolution: 576x320
Video Aspect Ratio: 1.800:1
Audio Codec: MP3
Audio BitRate: 133 kb/s VBR
Audio Channels: 2
RunTime: 47:07.440
Captured By: unknown

thank you pavy...i'm getting spoiled every saturday morning

Channel 5 - Extraordinary People - The Real Sleeping Beauty
Aired: 17th September 2007


Extraordinary People - The Real Sleeping Beauty.avi  [500.78 Mb]


Information

link: http://www.tvthrong.co.uk/coming-soon/c ... ing-beauty

This is the story of American Sarah Scantlin, who fell into a coma in 1985 at the age of 18, after being run over by a drunk driver. Doctors declared that recovery was impossible, and for 20 years she slept, until in 2005 something incredible happened – Sarah spoke. Nobody who had been in a coma-like state for so long had ever started speaking again.

This film follows Sarah as she attempts to prove once more that she can achieve the impossible. Her goal is independence: to feed herself, stand and walk unassisted. It also captures Sarah’s loved ones as they come to terms with the guilt, sacrifice and loss that they suffered during the years that Sarah ‘disappeared’.

Also featured in the programme is English woman Shahna Thwaites, who fell into a coma after a car accident as she returned from a festival. Doctors told her parents that she would never recover and that they should consider withdrawing life support, but after 23 days she awoke – beginning a ten-year struggle for recovery.


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Technical Specs

Video Codec: XVID
Video Bitrate: 1352 kb/s
Video Resolution: 672x384
Video Aspect Ratio: 1.750:1
Audio Codec: MP3
Audio BitRate: 133 kb/s VBR
Audio Channels: 2
RunTime: 46:49.400
Captured By: unknown (UKNova torrent)

Trying to find the one on the boy with Muscular Dystrophy which was aired the other week. Search has come up blank so far.

Pavy, thanks for sleeping beauty if that happens to me, please pull the plug out, or shoot me