Summary:

In this memoir, subtitled "One Woman's Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor," lesbian author and academic Harlyn Aizley confronts her approaching fortieth birthday by deciding to have a child. She and her partner, Faith, begin the process of choosing its biological father. The first major decision: a known or unknown sperm donor? Eventually they choose an unknown one, from a sperm bank with an identity-release program that will allow their child the option of meeting her biological father after she turns eighteen.

Aizley narrates, in absorbing and often very funny detail, the eight months it takes her to conceive, and then the nine months of pregnancy culminating in the birth of a daughter. Sad but telling counterpoints to this narrative are the terrorist attacks in September 2001, which occur during Aizley's pregnancy, and the experience of her mother, who dies three months after the baby's birth, of ovarian cancer.

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A bedraggled street dog is about to perish in the cold winter night, after having been scalded by boiling water earlier in the day. Suddenly, an elegant man feeds him and takes him home. The dog's savior is a famous and wealthy medical professor who rejuvenates people by hormonal manipulations.

As soon as the dog becomes accustomed to his new life of plenty, he finds himself the subject of a strange experiment--the professor and his assistant implant the testicles and pituitary gland of a dead criminal into the dog's body. After a rocky post-operative course, the dog gradually begins to change into an animal in human form and names himself Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharik. The half-beast-half-man, who gets along very well in the prevailing proletarian society, turns his creator's life into a nightmare--until the professor manages to reverse the procedure.

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This memoir reconstructs event by event the hospitalization of the author’s husband, Elliot Gilbert, for prostate surgery, his death in the recovery room, and the efforts of his wife and family to find out why he died. The account of those efforts over the ensuing months, which involved friends and lawyers, raises numerous legal, social, and medical questions about how medical mistakes occur; how the medical establishment may seek to protect itself; patients’ and families’ rights to information about norms and procedures; and the vulnerability of both patients and doctors in a litigious environment. The book also reflects on the process of mourning, and begins with an acknowledgment that the writing of it has constituted part of that process.

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In 1930s London, a doctor is visited by his wealthy and powerful patient Beatrice Glendenning, who demands an abortion. Although the doctor is an occasional guest of this woman and her husband at their country estate, the law requires that he refuse her request, and he advises her to have the child--and most certainly not to get a backstairs abortion. She tells him that it is not her husband's child, that bearing it would never do, and storms out of the office.

Ten days later her husband calls the doctor to ask if he could drop by the Glendenning townhouse and look in on Beatrice, who, he says, has the flu. The doctor goes, and discovers that she has gotten an infection from an undercover abortion. He feels trapped, but he treats Beatrice anyway, resenting her the whole time. The husband maintains his story that Beatrice has the flu, and the doctor leaves thinking that the husband never suspected. In the fall, as usual, he is invited to a pheasant shoot on the Glendenning estate.

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This is the fictional journal of four months in the life of Doctor Tyko Glas, a turn-of-the century Swedish physician, who writes, "How can it have come about that, out of all possible trades, I should have chosen the one which suits me least?" Though Doctor Glas is over 30 years old, he has "never been near a woman." In fact, he finds the physical aspects of sexual intercourse rather repulsive. Even more repulsive is his patient Rev. Gregorius, a nasty 57-year-old minister who happens to have a lovely young wife.

One day Mrs. Gregorius, also his patient, presents Doctor Glas with a strange request. Her husband's sexual advances have become onerous to her. Could the doctor tell him that she suffers from a pelvic disease and, therefore, must avoid sexual relations for several months? Doctor Glas agrees to do so, but the Rev. Gregorius is not easily put off. He believes that God has given married couples the duty to procreate, so sex is not simply a question of pleasure or preference. It is a question of duty. Thus, he rapes his wife, believing that their sacred marital duty is more important than her health.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Gregorius admits (to the doctor) that she has fallen in love with someone else, a handsome young businessman. As the summer progresses, it is clear that Doctor Glas has fallen in love with his patient, a love that is as tortured as it is silent and unrequited. Eventually Glas becomes convinced that he must save his patient from her repulsive husband's advances by murdering him.

Thus, the doctor carefully plans to poison the minister, using cyanide pills that he had once prepared for his own suicide. His plan is successful. The minister dies of an apparent "heart attack." Unfortunately, at around that time the handsome lover announces his engagement to another woman. The bereft Mrs. Gregorius, who sees nothing in the doctor, is left alone. Doctor Glas is also alone. "Life has passed me by," he ruminates.

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The story, set in small-town Ontario in 1960, takes the form of letters to her ex-fiancé from a young woman who has returned to the home of her father, a widowed physician who lives with his housekeeper, Mrs. Barrie. She recalls growing up with her strict and remote father and realizes now that he had been performing illegal abortions all her life. He will not discuss it, will not allow the word "abortion" to be said in his house, though she tells him she believes abortion should be legalized.

We are led to suspect that she herself has recently been pregnant.

When Mrs. Barrie breaks her arm, the doctor is forced to ask his daughter to assist with one of his "special" patients. She helps the young woman throughout the procedure, and disposes of the aborted fetus afterwards. Later, trapped indoors by a heavy snowfall, she and her father are sitting together at the kitchen table when she tells him about her own pregnancy.

She had carried it to term, giving up the baby for adoption. She had ended the engagement because her fiancé, a theology student, had insisted that she have an abortion before their wedding because he feared the social consequences of rumors that she had been pregnant before marriage. She is about to ask her father about his own work, and about what might happen should the law change and abortion become legal, when she realizes that he is not listening. He has had a massive stroke, and dies later the same day. The daughter turns away the next patient who calls about having an abortion.

She learns from the lawyer that, mysteriously, her father had virtually no money saved. She gives Mrs. Barrie most of the small amount her father had given her, and then realizes that all his money has already been given to Mrs. Barrie, either because she was blackmailing him, or because he loved her. She cannot tell which, but is oddly exhilarated and is now able to say goodbye to her fiancé for good.

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Summary:

The strange cast of characters in this satirical detective thriller includes most prominently, Dr. Rudy Graveline, a hack plastic surgeon trying to cover up the "accidental" death of a patient during a rhinoplasty procedure four years prior to the start of action. "One of the wondrous things about Florida, Rudy Graveline thought as he chewed on a jumbo shrimp, was the climate of unabashed corruption: There was absolutely no trouble from which money could not extricate you . . . Since the medical board was made up mostly of other doctors, Rudy Graveline had fully expected exoneration-- physicians stick together like shit on a shoe." (p.95)

Doctors, however, are not the only profession slammed by the author. Also receiving their comeuppance are corrupt lawyers, politicians, police officers, and judges. Searing satire is also directed at "reality journalists" through the character Reynaldo Flemm (i.e. Geraldo Rivera). Not surprisingly the "good guys" win and the "bad guys," including Dr. Graveline, lose. But the hideous way in which Dr. Graveline meets his demise is too gruesome to reveal here.

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Summary:

A philosopher and a clinical ethicist conduct an analysis of the practice of assisted suicide. They begin with the premise that health care providers may at times be assisting with suicide now, whether or not it is legal and whether or not the ethical dimensions have been solved. They contend that assisting a suicide might be morally right, but only when the patient’s choice is rational and free.

Referring to an earlier publication by Prado (Last Choice: Preemptive Suicide in Advanced Age, 1990; 2nd ed. 1998), they devote a chapter to each of three criteria used to determine the "rationality" of a choice for suicide, and another chapter to the "slippery slope" argument. A final chapter summarizes their contribution to this topic.

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Summary:

The sculptor Ken Harrison (Richard Dreyfuss) is badly injured in a car accident and finds himself in the middle of life permanently paralyzed below the neck and dependent on others for his care and survival. Ken is a strong-minded, passionate man totally dedicated to his art, and he decides he does not want to go on with the compromised, highly dependent life that his doctors, his girlfriend Pat (Janet Eilber), and others urge on him. He breaks up with Pat and fights to be released from the hospital, to gain control of his life in order to stop the care that keeps him alive and unhappy.

His antagonist is the hospital's medical director Dr. Emerson (John Cassavetes), who believes in preserving life no matter what, and so tries to get Ken committed as clinically depressed. Ken's attending physician, Dr. Scott (Christine Lahti), begins with the establishment but gradually moves toward Ken's position.

The film ends with the judge at a legal hearing deciding that Ken is not clinically depressed and that he thus has the right to refuse treatment and be discharged. In the last scene, Ken lies in a hospital bed framed by his own sculptural realization of the forearm and hand of God from Michelangelo's Creation of Man.

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Summary:

This medical thriller begins with two crazed naked men escaping from an unmarked urban institutional building. One of them winds up in the Gramercy Hospital (NYC) Emergency Room under the care of the young Dr. Guy Luthan (Hugh Grant). The patient dies while exhibiting baffling symptoms and under suspicious circumstances. Dr. Luthan decides to investigate, against the advice of his boss, but with the assistance of ER nurse Jodie Trammel (Sarah Jessica Parker). Suddenly, police are breaking into his apartment and finding (obviously planted) cocaine. Luthan is fired by the hospital, his promising career apparently ruined by a faceless criminal conspiracy.

Still intrigued by the mystery patient, Luthan follows some street leads that take him to the Inferno-like caverns underneath Grand Central Station and the homeless people who live there. He is pursued by armed agents, is wounded, and wakes up in a hospital bed paralyzed from the neck down. Enter the prize-laden Dr. Lawrence Myrick (Gene Hackman), who explains to Luthan that he is trying to develop a medical procedure that will regenerate human nerve tissue and has been secretly using the homeless as guinea pigs. He rationalizes this practice on the basis of its huge potential benefits and tries to enlist Luthan on his side, explaining that his paralysis is temporary (but under Myrick's control) and in part an attempt to stir up Luthan's empathy for the patients who could be helped by Myrick's procedure if it is developed.

Of course, Luthan escapes from the bed. On the way out he encounters Myrick and his armed agents in the lobby, where there is one last round in the ethical debate before Myrick is accidentally killed by one of his henchman. Luthan's career is reconstituted, he is awarded a fellowship, and the film ends with Myrick's widow standing at the gate of the NYU School of Medicine giving Myrick's data to Luthan, saying that her husband was trying to do good but in the wrong way. She hopes that Luthan will use the data in the right way. Luthan smilingly enters a stone building with "Neurology" carved in the lintel.

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