Winner Defeats Rare Killer Disease.

Winner Defeats Rare Killer Disease.British film director MICHAEL WINNER has narrowly escaped death after beating a rare disease he caught from eating an oyster.Winner contracted Vibrio vulnificus - a virus that lives in warm water and is transmitted through swimming with open wounds or by eating shellfish - while holidaying in Barbados over Christmas (DEC06).The bug commonly kills people within 32 hours of infection, but the 72-year-old cheated death by jetting back to a private clinic in London and undergoing a gruelling 10 week series of eleven operations that cost him a staggering $1.45 million (£750,000).The DEATH WISH director says, "I started shaking uncontrollably. It was obvious to everyone but me I was very ill."I lost control of my bodily functions."When this illness gets you, every organ in your body collapses."You've got to bring every single organ back to life again."