Peter Reeg on Most Interesting Person [Berlin Trail02e02]
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0:07 - 0:09So, come in...
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0:18 - 0:20Who am I?
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0:21 - 0:23I am Peter Reeg
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0:23 - 0:25I'm an Orthopedic Surgeon
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0:26 - 0:28I studied in Berlin and Heidelberg
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0:28 - 0:33and came to Berlin in 1970 for political reasons.
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0:34 - 0:38I was a member of a Socialist student union.
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0:39 - 0:41Medicine is politics.
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0:41 - 0:43Medicine is defined by politics.
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0:43 - 0:48The politics define how we exercise medecine.
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0:50 - 0:54You can't separate medicine and politics.
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0:55 - 1:01The efforts to cut costs in the health-system
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1:01 - 1:03is a problem for us.
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1:04 - 1:06That is politics. Of course it is.
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1:08 - 1:12The pharmaceutical industry only researches
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1:13 - 1:15areas where they expect to earn money.
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1:15 - 1:17But at that point
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1:17 - 1:22our society should finance research.
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1:22 - 1:25We can't leave that to a single company.
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1:26 - 1:31I am also interested in the history of medicine.
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1:31 - 1:34I wrote my doctorate with Professor Baader
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1:34 - 1:38I examined how the Nazis
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1:38 - 1:42developed reductionist medicine.
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1:42 - 1:44Which were techniques
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1:44 - 1:48to boost physical strength or ability with drugs.
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1:48 - 1:55Nowadays such techniques aren't used as ruthlessly
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1:55 - 1:57and as brutally as the Nazis did
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1:57 - 2:01But some elements do still exist and are used today.
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2:02 - 2:07Baader's work had a major impact on me
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2:07 - 2:10For some time I even thought about
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2:10 - 2:13Changing my specialty to history of medicine
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2:13 - 2:15I didn't do it
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2:15 - 2:17because I like the contact I have with my patients
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2:17 - 2:20and I think I'm good with people.
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2:25 - 2:28The person who has impressed me the most
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2:29 - 2:30is Professor Kentenich.
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2:30 - 2:33He is the head of a gynecological department
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2:33 - 2:35here in Berlin.
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2:35 - 2:39He does many things, sometimes too many I think
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2:39 - 2:44He is interested in politics, and extremely social
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2:44 - 2:47He thinks about ethical questions in medicine,
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2:47 - 2:49which is also very important.
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2:52 - 2:55You have many possibilities in Orthopedics.
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2:55 - 2:57You can use conservative treatments,
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2:57 - 2:58You can use surgery.
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2:59 - 3:00You can do both.
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3:01 - 3:07Yes, and I am a handicraft man - you can see.
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3:10 - 3:13And, now she will walk without pain.
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3:13 - 5999:59That is the benefit.
- Title:
- Peter Reeg on Most Interesting Person [Berlin Trail02e02]
- Description:
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I first met Dr. Peter Reeg at Cafe Literature, a West Berlin haunt for intellectual coffee drinking, book browsing and lectures by international authors. It set the tone for an interview with a man who over the following 2 weeks was about to change the way I viewed the world, more than slightly.
We are born with instinct and informed by encounter. The combination of our genetic makeup and our lived experience manifest in how we behave. Some encounters are generally common-place, like eating breakfast or going to the loo. Some are less common, such as getting paid to cut people open in order manipulate their insides to relieve pain, suffering and improve quality of life.
For Dr. Peter Reeg the operating theater is familiar domain. He has performed surgery on thousands of patients, enabling them to walk, move and exist within a mobile world where they once could not. His good humour, openness and relaxed charm while sawing bone and hammering metal fixings into the cartilage of anesthetized patients in preparation for prosthetic reconfiguration - realigned normalcy in an instant.
On the one hand my diverted eyes while filming him at work, proved that inexperience of this environment and fear of the unknown play an important role in immediate response, but in conjunction something must also be said of the role of the Doctor in modern times as judge and jury of the human body.
Reeg's expressed academic interest is medical history. In particular, the ethics of contemporary medical practice informed by Nazi research, added a compelling dimension to the experience of making of this film.
- Video Language:
- German