Man Alive

Some mothers do have 'em-babies who won't sleep, demand constant attention, go to school and disrupt lessons. Sometimes these children are also highly-sensitive and exceptionally bright. But if they are not allowed to develop at their own extraordinary pace they can be a problem to everyone including themselves. Plato called them ' children of gold'. Surprisingly, these days some parents and teachers readily confess that the fastest learners are often a source of heartache and unhappiness. Yet these are the children who, in theory, should be the country's greatest asset.

What do you do if the treatment your doctor prescribes is not working? More people than ever are turning to practitioners of ' alternative ' medicine. Business is booming for osteopaths who relieve agonisring backache, herbalists who dispense Nature's remedies, naturopaths who believe special diets can cure. This programme examines the arguments for and against accepting some of these ' specialists ' into the NHS.

Jack Pizzey chairs a studio discussion about the Home Office detention centre in Harmondsworth and the wider issue of immigration control.

We've been told it endless times - with industrial growth lies th( promised land of full employment a healthy balance of payments prosperity for all. But some industrialists are holding back. Why? Because, they say, the rewards are negligible - and highly taxable; the ' disincentives ' make the risks not worth taking. As one company chairman puts it, ' No Minister is going to bail us out with L4 million if something goes wrong.' Tonight, Man Alive asks three successful firms why they are standing still. If their attitudes are typical, it is worrying news for all of us - and it will take more than exhortation to get Great Britain Ltd going.

If all goes well for a handful of local prosecutors and for 71 per cent of America's electors, the United States is about to reaffirm its belief in the ultimate penalty. One man, Gary Gilmore , was shot dead in January at his own request. Today, over 350 men, women and teenagers on America's death rows await their turn to die. What happens to them may have implications for Britain and the rest of the world. Nick Ross and a Man Alive Report film crew have travelled to the American mid-West, and report on the revival of the death penalty in America, together with the results of a Gallup poll on capital punishment commissioned for the programme in Britain.

Join Jeremy James, Nick Ross and their audience for a discussion focusing on global human rights abuses, with a special level of attention paid to: The butchering of Ugandan citizens by Idi Amin, who had such a loose grip on reality he fancied himself as leader of Scotland. Rhodesia, where an entire race is subjugated before Mugabe brought the equality of everyone's lives being destroyed. USSR political prisoners force-treated with jabs of untested drugs, destroying bodily autonomy in a scandal we wouldn't see again until?

The film shows the confrontation between Lifers at the New Jersey State Prison and four boys from suburbia. The boys are white and middle class. The prisoners are 85 per cent black. Prison suicides, murders and rapes are commonplace, say the Lifers. A Lifer knew that his teenage son was getting deeper and deeper into crime. He believed that the only way to stop him would be for him to see prison life in the raw, to see the real tragedy of caged men. This was the beginning of a scheme where youngsters are brought into prison and are confronted - shattered some people hope - by the horrors of prison life.

007 turned secrecy into a money-spinner, but for many ordinary people it's a costly reality. The Official Secrets Act was rushed through Parliament in 1911 as a reaction to the scare about German spies dropping out of the skies. Now, say the critics, it's too often used against the man in the street. On film, Man Alive reports on a wide range of examples of how secrecy can work-from the residents of one town who discovered too late that a road was coming through their houses, to the case of Freddie Laker who found that secrecy nearly stopped Skytrain from getting off the ground. In the studio are people who say that there are times when silence is the bureaucrat's favourite weapon, and there are others who argue that a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. Government periodically reviews the working of the Official Secrets Act - but with little effect. What's happened to all those promises about ' open government'?

They would prefer to keep it to themselves, but in the small town of Methil, on the Firth of Forth, they're quietly arguing about what went wrong-at a local yard for building North Sea platforms. Seemingly, it is a tale of opportunities lost - with all those classic allegations of poor management, fractious unions, low productivity and delayed deliveries. Can Methil, with its yard now undercut by an apparently more efficient French competitor, and its people on the dole arguing the reason why, tell the rest of us anything about that much bigger industrial concern: The United Kingdom Ltd?

A woman's death in the operating theatre sparks off a two-months' row between two top consultants - a brain surgeon and an anaesthetist. Patients are prepared for operations that do not take place. Administrators cannot control the consultants. The area health authority's internal inquiry at first fails to satisfy the Minister of Health, and even today disturbs many who claim the truth has not come out. In this investigative film, Jack Pizzey looks at the implications which can arise when consultants, for whatever motives, try to fulfil too many commitments

How good or bad are our comprehensive schools compared with those in other countries? This programme sets out to throw some light on this urgent subject.