Everest: doctors in the death zone. Part 1.

The first in a two-part series following a team of doctors as they climb Everest. In March 2007, the largest research team ever to go to the Himalayas arrived to set up the highest human laboratory on earth at the summit of Everest. Many of the team are intensive care specialists; all want to understand the effects of hypoxia on the body in order to work out why some critically ill patients survive low levels of oxygen while others die. The severe hypoxia the ascent of Everest produces makes a perfect natural laboratory to study the effects of low oxygen on their own bodies and they believe that their research here will allow them to re-write the medical text books. In this part the doctors begin the ascent and almost lose a member of the team.