Medical Evidence Matters with Liz Tucker

Former Canadian politician Terence Young became a safety advocate, starting the non-profit group Drug Safety Canada, following the tragic death of his 15 year old daughter Vanessa after taking the drug Propulsid. The drug was withdrawn from the North American market the day before Vanessa's funeral. Terence argues in a new book that it’s essential that we all educate ourselves about drug safety. W...

Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr Gary Fettke frustrated by the increasing number of diabetic patients' limbs  he was having to amputate, started prescibing low sugar diets to these patients. But then found himself sanctioned by the Australian medical board for giving nutritional advice. Fettke was told: "there's nothing associated with your medical training that makes you an expert, or authority on the fiel...

Dr Richard K. Burt,  a world leading pioneer who performed America’s first hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) to treat multiple sclerosis, discusses how he developed this innovative procedure and its future in the treatment of MS. While the treatment is only suitable for certain MS patients it can be life changing. The US’s National MS Society says there is growing evidence that HSCT may be...

Dr Shilpa Ravella, a transplant gastroenterologist, argues that inflammation may be a common factor in many of the diseases we face today from heart disease to cancer. While our bodies' inflammatory response is essential in fighting off infections and viruses,  in her recently published book A Silent Fire: The Story of Inflammation, Diet and Disease,  Shilpa claims many of us are suffering from hi...

Dr David Healy was one of the first psychiatrists to suggest that while in some cases the antidepressant drugs, the SSRIs may help prevent suicide, in other very rare cases, they might actually increase the suicide risk. So how does a doctor balance that risk? David also discusses the evidence from healthy volunteer trials, these are small trials that take place before the major trials and regulat...

Professor Tim Spector reveals how developing research about our gut biome – the microbes in our gut – is revolutionising our understanding of  diet and disease. And he argues this may also help explain why we got so many things wrong about food. For example, it turns out that not all calories are equal, because different microbes will deal with identical calorie foods in very different ways.   70%...

Dr Michael Holick is a pioneer in vitamin D science and has spent a lifetime researching and exploring what he believes are its potentially life-changing benefits. He argues that across the world guidelines for the amount of vitamin D we need are simply too low. And that many of us, even those  living in a hot climate, will not be able to get enough vitamin D from sunlight alone. Dr Horlick conten...

Harvard trained psychiatrist Dr Georgia Ede is pioneering the use of low carb -  otherwise known as ketogenic - diets to help treat a range of mental illness from major depression to schizophrenia. An approach she believes could revolutionise psychiatric care in the future. She spent a decade treating patients with the standard approaches of medication and psychotherapy but became increasingly fru...

Dr Robert Lustig  argues sugar is fuelling an epidemic of chronic and metabolic disease, from diabetes and strokes, to cancer and heart disease costing hundreds of thousands of lives. He says in a view that some have seen as controversial that we need to see sugar not just as empty calories,  but as a chronic, addictive toxin. In this podcast, Rob reveals just what sugar does to our bodies. And he...

Welcome to Season Two of  Medical Evidence Matters with Liz Tucker This week’s story is so extraordinary that the best selling spy writer John Le Carré used it as the inspiration for one of his novels. And indeed if it was a work of fiction it would be dismissed as too fantastical or improbable. To tell this remarkable tale, I am talking to whistleblower Dr Nancy Olivieri, who became concerned dur...

Dr Eric Topol, one of the world’s leading cardiologists, reveals how the smartphone has the potential to revolutionise healthcare and create far more targeted treatment for patients. Eric, who has been listed as one of the top ten cited researchers in all of medicine and has been voted the number one most influential physician-leader in the United States, explains the huge range of tests that phon...

This week’s podcast is about one of the world’s top selling drugs, Neurontin (generic name Gabapentin).  And it centres on an extraordinary court case which for the very first time accused a drug company, Pfizer and its subsidiary Warner Lambert, of racketeering, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, a piece of legislation that was actually brought in tackle organized crime...

Neurosurgeon and author, Mr Henry Marsh, pioneer of the awake craniotomy, a brain surgery performed while the patient is still awake, discusses the ethical dilemmas and realities of the surgeon’s role. And he explains why he thinks doctors need a certain level of self-deception and exaggerated self-belief. But after decades of treating patients, frequently for dangerous and life-threatening condit...

Dr Jason Fung, a kidney specialist, and one of the world's leading pioneers in low carb diets and intermittent fasting, reveals why modern medicine has been so slow to explore the  benefits of fasting and discusses its benefits not just for type II diabetes but for a range of other metabolic and neurological conditions. For decades, patients with type II diabetes were told to eat a high carbohydra...

In the final part of his interview, Professor Karol Sikora, one of the world's leading cancer experts and a past director of  the WHO Cancer Programme, explains why the UK does poorly in the treatment of some common cancers and the reforms he believes are necessary to change this. And Karol goes on to discuss the devastating impact that Covid has had on the UK's cancer services, which led to palli...

Professor Karol Sikora, one of the world's leading cancer experts - an oncologist for 44 years and a past director of the WHO Cancer Programme - talks about his experience of treating cancer over the last four decades, and  explains what cancer patients really need to know. He believes those who take an active interest in their care are in the strongest position to get the best treatment, so knowi...

Journalist Gabrielle Jackson reveals how the  research for her book Pain and Prejudice uncovered just how little medical science understands the female body. Astonishingly, it turns out that most of what we know about human biology comes from the study of men, male animals and male cell lines. Up until the 1990s, women were largely excluded from medical trials. The result of this is that there are...

Professor Joanna Moncrieff discusses the serotonin hypothesis, the evidence for the effectiveness of SSRIs, and the emerging data about SSRI sexual side effects.   If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal . The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on X and read fu...