BODY STORY - COLD WAR - Have you ever wondered what happens to your body in a crisis – a car accident, for example, or an acute allergic reaction? Would you like to know why the cabbage-soup diet doesn’t work, or why eating a chicken can lead to an experience not unlike an alien invasion? How do we get through adolescence, when it sometimes seems as if our bodies are rioting and our brains have given up altogether? The award-winning series Body Story reveals the biological drama behind six critical moments in human lives.
Holly Jones is a 25 year old singer, who works as a motorcycle courier to pay her rent. Her band’s first gig is just two days away. But today fate brings her together with a common yet potentially deadly organism – the influenza (flu) virus. The tiny virus infiltrates one of Holly’s throat cells, seizes control, and begins to clone itself. Six hours later, 10000 viruses are let loose in her throat.
We witness the remarkable battle that takes place beneath Holly’s skin as her immune system fights back. And we show that her flu symptoms are not caused by the virus itself, but by her body’s own attempts to destroy the alien invader. Wave after wave of immune cells are launched towards her throat to attack the virus. Whilst this is happening Holly can neither work nor sing, and her position in the band is threatened. But as her immune system finally eliminates the virus, so Holly recovers her voice and fitness. She is left to fight another day, and in a twist of poetic justice the virus finds itself another host.
