Hair Soup
Aired 2 Okt 1992 00:10 - 00:40, Yorkshire Television
30 minutes drama documentary produced by Swallow Productions
The documentary features episodes from the life of Dr. Roger Altounyan. Being an asthmatic, Altounyan used himself as a human guinea pig to find a drug that could prevent asthma attacks. He tested some 700 chemical compounds over an 8-year period, before he found one that worked, sodium cromoglycate, in 1963. His approach was to inhale a compound and then expose himself to guinea pig hair, to which he was allergic.
Sodium cromoglycate, which turned out to be anti-inflammatoric, later became one of a few other compounds in the drug Intal, developed by Fisons Pharmaceuticals in 1965 for use as an inhaled drug. 20 years later Altounyan invented the spinhaler, a prototype for contemporary inhalers, nebulizers, vaporizers, and atomizers.
Cast
Barbara Altounyan (Roger Altounyan’s daughter)..... Narrator
David Suchet..... Dr. Roger Altounyan
David Harries..... ?
Adam Bareham..... ?
Marlene Sidaway..... ?
Karl Johnson..... ?
