Section:GDN 12 PaGe:14 Edition Date:190829 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 28/8/2019 16:40 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian
14 Thursday 29 August 2019
Since Xi Jinping became president of
China in 2013, the nation has reinforced
its status as a growing superpower,
militarily and economically. Yet his
six - year leadership has not been without
controversy. This three-parter traces
the story of his hardline rule , which has
seen China lurch further and further
into tech-enabled totalitarianism,
stifl ing freedom of speech with its
“great fi rewall” and engaging in the
widely condemned mass internment
of its Uighur minority.
Gwilym MumfordThe Secret Teacher
9pm, Channel 4
The last of the series in
which kind millionaires
pose as teaching assistants- an awkward sticking
plaster over austerity’s
wide wounds. How this
week’s businessman,
the recruitment boss
Darren Ryemill, picks his
two lucky proteges isn’t
clear, since everyone
in their dilapidated
Berkshire school needs
help. To his credit,
Ryemill sees the scale
of the problem. Jack Seale
World War Speed
9pm, BBC Four
This disturbing
documentary was
originally broadcast as
an episode of the PBS
history series Secrets of
the Dead. The historian
James Holland seeks the
truth behind the use of
methamphetamine and
other synthetic stimulants
during the second world
war, in what is now
considered to be the fi rst
pharmacological arms
race. Mike BradleyAlone Against al Qaeda
9pm, PBS America
A docu drama about the
FBI counter-terrorism
chief turned World Trade
Center head of securityJohn O’Neill, who spent
years obsessively tracking
Osama bin Laden and his
terrorist network. O’Neill
was fatally thwarted in his
aim by interdepartmental
ding-dongs – and his
messy private life.
Ali CatterallThis Way Up
10pm, Channel 4
Episode four of Aisling
Bea’s tender comedy
about mental health ,
outsiderdom and family.
Aine begrudgingly spends
a day with her luvvie
mum, Eileen (Sorcha
Cusack). Between home
truths, dinner-table tiff s
and a brilliantly crap
cover of Zombie by the
Cranberries, this series
continues to be a joy to
behold. Hannah J DaviesBrassic
10pm, Sky One
Star/creator Joe Gilgun’s
Lancashire love letter
continues with a
top - quality episode
that sees Ash set
aside his penchant for
pony - rustling to enter
a bare-knuckle bout
against a fi ghter from a
rival family of Travellers.
Inevitably, things go
wrong, leaving Vinnie to
wade in and try to salvage
the gang’s honour. MBDr Javid
Abdelmoneim
at a Danish
cannabis farmChina: A New World Order
9pm, BBC Two
And
another
thingCan we have a
media blackout
on pictures of
Boris Johnson?
I understand
print coverage
must continue,
but the visual
assault is
too much.Review Cannabis: Miracle
Medicine or Dangerous Drug?,
BBC T wo
London’s Institute of Psychiatry – that shows how
harmful cannabis can be in unregulated form s. Daily
skunk users, for example, are fi ve times more likely
to experience a psychotic episode than non-users.
Then again, ingesters of cannabis resin have the same
psychosis risk profi le as non-users.
Weaving the basic science nicely round
Abdelmoneim’s enrolment in an empirical study of the
eff ects of these variants, he explains why this is. There
are two main compounds in cannabis: THC, the one that
makes you high , and CBD, the one that doesn’t. Guess
which one makes up between 14% and 23% of skunk
versus only 4% of resin? Yes, the psychoactive THC.
The study in which our presenter participates
involves him inhaling – on four occasions – the
equivalent of a spliff each time, made up of diff erent
proportions of the two cannabinoids. It proves what you
would expect: that amounts of the active ingredients
make a diff erence ; and that there is nothing funnier than
watching a person in a position of authority get high
and start giggling and munching his way through the
nearest snacks. The creeping paranoia and anxiety on
two occasions is less fun, but at least it wears off with the
joint. Some of us live our whole – sober – lives that way.
Once recovered, Abdelmoneim travels to Tel Aviv
to meet “the godfather of cannabis”, Prof Raphael
Mechoulam, who identifi ed THC and CBD (through
meticulous chemistry and handfuls of THC-infused cake
made by his wife ) in 1964. Then, in 1992, he discovered
that the human body naturally produces a painkilling,
possibly euphoria-inducing compound with more or
less the same composition as THC, but in much lower
quantities. This kickstarted the medical cannabis
revolution in Israel, then the rest of the world.
In Tel Aviv, Abdelmoneim meets elderly patients
who have been relieved of chronic pain and dependence
on opioids (with their potentially life-threatening
side-eff ects on ageing bodies) by the use of carefully
calibrated doses of THC and CBD. “I just can’t get over
the sight of prescriptions at strengths I automatically
think of as illicit ... illegal,” he says.
This is the only time cultural concerns are overtly
mentioned, and their all-but-absence is perhaps the
only weakness in the documentary. The focus on the
medical uses and issues doesn’t leave much space
for a consideration of more socio political issues. Our
historical puritanical prejudice against substances that
get you pleasurably high, and the punitive attitude that
has surrounded them, has surely played – and still plays- a large part in slowing the research into the potential
cannabis seems to off er.
It is nonetheless a lively, informative, educational
documentary, compassionate and curious – another
feather in Abdelmoneim and Horizon’s cap and, let us
hope, another strut of support in the campaign to allow
Alfi e and his fellow patients more and better access to
their drug of last resort.
★★★★☆
TV and radio
I
t is the best and the worst time to have a
documentary that requires you to balance
two contradictory thoughts in your head ; we
are out of practice. We are a bit too mono, in
everything, these days. But the latest instalment
of the fl agship science programme Horizon,
presented by the wisely chosen Javid Abdelmoneim –
a doctor who wears his intelligence lightly and always
looks to take the audience with him – encourage s us
to do so.
In Cannabis: Medical Miracle or Dangerous Drug? ,
Abdelmoneim disentangle s the facts-so-far from the
myths that have grown up around cannabis – and, since
legislation changed last year, the over-the-counter
products that contain it – with a view to discover ing
where he, as a doctor, should stand.
On the one hand, you have the undeniable benefi ts
its use has brought to some patients. Footage of
Parkinsonian tremors disappearing under the infl uence
is endlessly powerful, as are the recordings of seven-
year-old Alfi e Dingley having one of the almost constant
epileptic fi ts he suff ered for fi ve years from birth until his
parents moved to Amsterdam so he could be prescribed
cannabis oil. We see him now, back in the UK as one of
the fi rst people to be provided it legally , after a campaign
for a change in the law led by his devoted mother. He
is seizure-free as long as his medicine keeps coming;
happy, voluble, transformed.
On the other, you have the research – laid out by
the clinical scientist Dr Marta di Forti at King’s CollegeSeparating
facts, fi ction
and the ethics
of healthcare
Lucy Mangan
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