LONDON: In discussions over what broadcasting’s ultimate depravity would be, the consensus has usually settled around two scenarios: the televising of an execution, and a gameshow in which cardiac patients compete for a transplanted heart. The first has been pre-empted by the internet (where pseudo-judicial murders from the Middle East have been screened), and the second will soon be brought closer by American network television. ABC is preparing a series in which ‘an elite team of physicians’ will submit volunteers to ‘breakthrough procedures’. The apposite titles This is Your Life and Survivor having already been used for other formats, the show will be called The Miracle Workers.

The series is still at a stage where, as they say in TV, the treatment is being written, so casting (or perhaps plaster-casting) is not complete. But the International Essential Tremor Foundation reports on its website that ABC is seeking patients with this neurological condition to undergo the experimental technique of ‘deep brain stimulation’. So presumably feelers are also being put out to bodies representing other chronic and hard-to-treat conditions.

The rules seem to be that participants will not be charged but must agree to every stage of their treatment being followed by cameras. There is therefore the possibility of deterioration (or, in an extreme case, death) taking place before an audience of millions.

My instant symptoms at the prospect of The Miracle Workers are nausea and sweating. I can see that an easy case in favour can be made. Medical procedures have been a commonplace on television for years. Professor Robert Winston cleverly used television documentaries about his patients to increase the profile and funding of fertility medicine.

A second defence would be intention. Most of television’s innovations increase the medium’s level of malevolence, Big Brother being a perfect example.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service