Mosley undergoes a raft of health tests from a bowel scope to a heart scan to genetic screening. Some are worthwhile, others of dubious benefit – and one is positively shocking
I wish I knew what it looked like up Michael Mosley’s bum. Yay! I’m just about to find out. He’s kindly sharing his bowel scope with us, on Horizon special Are Health Tests Really a Good Idea? (BBC2). Makes an alternative to The Great British Bake Off on BBC1. A bowel scope is like a colonoscopy, only less adventurous: it only goes 40-50cm or so in/up. Here goes, then: deep breath in Michael, now breathe slowly out, and up we go …
“Here is your beautiful rectum,” says friendly Maggie, the nurse consultant, looking at the screen. “Blimey, that enema did the business, didn’t it,” says Michael. A relief to everyone.
I’m not sure I’d describe it as beautiful – it’s a shiny pink tunnel, with supporting rings at regular intervals. But it’s certainly a relief to know there will be no further “trains” coming down the line, while we’re working on the track.
Maggie pumps some gas in, like a fart on rewind. “God, that’s weird,” says Michael. It’s making me wince, and clench a little, just watching; suddenly the (also wince-making) punnery of Mel’n’Sue on the other side seems like a very attractive option. Then, out we come, slowly, still checking – oops, and there’s a polyp, a little stalagmite/stalactite (it’s hard to keep a grip of which way is up and which way is down in here). In go Maggie’s snippers to snip it off. It will be sent off to the lab to be checked out, but there’s probably nothing to worry about.
From a medical point of view, the bowel scope – to detect the earliest signs of bowel cancer – is one of the least controversial tests on the show. Soon, it will be available to everyone over 55 who wants it, and just about everyone agrees that it’s a good idea (to have as a medical procedure – not to put on prime-time TV; I’d have thought the figure for that would be a little lower).
Some of the other health tests here are more contentious. Such as screening healthy people for breast and prostate cancers. Or the expensive heart CT scan that Michael has at a private Harley Street clinic; does it tell him anything that the basic assessment done by his GP doesn’t? (Where is your GP, by the way, Michael? I want to go there; they have bourbon biscuits.)
More controversial still are DIY genetic tests, which promise to give you an insight into your ancestry and screen your DNA for conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Michael does one of these, finds out he doesn’t have any variants associated with Alzheimer’s, but then bottles the Parkinson’s one; well, what’s the point in finding out when there’s nothing he could do about it? It would just lead to unnecessary anxiety.
But then Michael does a final test, also genetic, to find out how well he is ageing. And it indicates that, in his late 50s, he is probably not ageing brilliantly, and is more likely to die.
