Palmer told me that because of Tezuka's Black Jack, people in Japan are much more aware of the issue of medical corruption than in most other countries. "Imagine if Batman were about medical corruption," said Palmer. "When a new movie comes out, the whole nation talks about it. That has had a vast impact on how the Japanese nation thinks about doctors.
Prof George Ikkos, president of the Royal Society of Medicine's psychiatry section, says it is more to do with learning about ourselves from other people. "Programmes like Casualty are dramatic and exciting - they involve a lot of ordinary people we can relate to directly.
Television portrayal of medicine may have a profound effect on patient’s medical knowledge and decision-making. A survey of geriatric patients demonstrated that 42% of older adults named television as their primary source of health information.