Blind faith: Do genetic eye disease ‘treatments' work?

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

BBC journalist Ramadan Younes investigates the world of genetic eye disease ‘treatments’, where some practitioners claim to cure the incurable. Living with his own visual impairment, Ramadan sets out to explore how clinics around the world, from Sudan to Gaza and from Russia to the United States, target predominantly Arab patients by advertising, selling and conducting procedures that are at best ineffective and can at worst cause total blindness.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The attacker had very good knowledge of banking systems.
0:04.0	$2.1 billion in stolen funds.
0:06.0	Money laundering operations.
0:08.0	Cyber-criminal group.
0:09.0	He's a smart guy.
0:10.0	From the BBC World Service, the Lazarus Heist is back for a brand new season.
0:14.0	Catch up with season one of the podcasts now by searching for the Lazarus Heist,
0:18.0	wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
0:21.0	And get ready for season two coming next week.
0:26.0	My name is Ramadhan Jonas.
0:29.0	I've lived in Cairo all my life.
0:32.0	When I was a young child, my mother realized that there was something wrong with my eyes.
0:40.0	At the age of 22, I found out exactly what was wrong,
0:46.0	a genetic eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa.
0:50.0	It was in that I learned that one day, I might go blind.
0:56.0	Currently, there is no cure for what I have.
0:59.0	But that is not what I am many of the millions of others who live with this disease have been led to believe.
1:11.0	In 2011, I read about a treatment in China.
1:15.0	After raising 13,000 dollars, I traveled to Beijing.
1:20.0	For a procedure I was told what it changed my life.
1:23.0	I lay in a hospital bed.
1:25.0	In total darkness, my eyes wrapped in bandages for five days.
	...

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