Saturday, September 03, 2005

Foetus Snatcher

Channel 4 is currently running a 'Psycho' season and on Tuesday 6th September will be broadcasting 'The Foetus Snatcher' at 10pm, a documentary about the phenomenon of women who steal unborn children from their mothers.

The write-up in The Telegraph's Televison and Radio supplement tells of a near-term mother who was strangled with her foetal heart monitor cord, subjected to a crude caesarean - her attacker using car keys and biting through the umbilical cord - and left dead, with her living baby taken. There have since been several similar instances in the States.

It will be interesting to see how such a topic is handled by Channel 4, who have produced some high quality health-related documentaries recently. Review to follow.

Although I didn't manage to catch it, also in the series was The Sperminator on Tuesday 30th August, also at 10pm. This documentary dealt with a cowboy fertility doctor who provided his own semen samples to his unwitting patients and is believed to have fathered 75 children in this way. Unbelievably, he is also apparently the doctor to have pioneered amniocentesis, a procedure where amniotic fluid is sample as a diagnostic procedure during pregnancy.

All in all 'The Psycho' season seems worth watching, if you can abide the grisly nature of the topics handled. Did anyone else catch any others in the series?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I steeled myself to watch this and was quite impressed with the way it was handled. I was grateful for the lack of tasteless 'reconstructions' (particularly the amateur car-key caesarean performed on one of victims).

aj said...

Grrr, the wonders of modern technology! 'DigiTV' (tv card software) only managed to record the first seven minutes of this documentary (just the right amount to get you really interested) before it conked out on me. From what I hear this was a good program, just not one that fate wanted me to watch!