Word: physicians
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Noting that the state of Michigan has no law barring physician-assisted suicide, a judge in Pontiac dismissed murder charges against Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist, for his role in the death of two chronically ill women in 1991. Though the state senate has passed a bill that would make assisted suicide a felony, the house has yet to follow suit. "We have more consumer protection for people buying a car than we do for people making this type of decision," says state senator Fred Dillingham, the bill's sponsor...
Doctors are also concerned about the legal ramifications of the A.M.A. directive. "If the physician fails to ask and the patient is then further injured or killed, the patient or her survivors could sue the doctor for failing to take action," warns Alan Meisel, director of the Center for Medical Ethics at the University of Pittsburgh. "There is precedent for this in the child-abuse area." On the other hand, while all 50 states require doctors to report instances of child abuse, there is no such requirement for reporting battered spouses. Says Meisel: "A court might well say, 'This...
Hawking's choice of career was most fortunate, for himself as well as for science. Rejecting the urging of his physician father to study medicine, Hawking chose instead to concentrate on math and theoretical physics, first at Oxford and then at Cambridge. But at age 21 he developed the first symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) -- also known as Lou Gehrig's disease -- a disorder that would inevitably render him paralyzed and incapable of performing most kinds of work. As the authors note, theoretical physics was "one of the very few jobs for which his mind was the only real...
That is just one of the grenades Smith lobs in his new book, Women and Doctors: A Physician's Explosive Account of Women's Medical Treatment -- and Mistreatment -- in America Today (Atlantic Monthly Press; $20.95). Male domination of the medical profession has bred a host of abuses, says Smith, 49, a medical maverick who upset colleagues by starting the first HMO in Colorado Springs, Colo., and now acts as a consultant on national health policy. Research on heart disease and cancer, as well as on the benefits of various therapies, has centered almost exclusively...
Sexism, ranging from outright abuse to subtle debasement, is pervasive in the profession. Smith recalls a colleague who invited him to do an exam on a patient under the false guise of a consultation because "she has a body you won't believe." Another physician, whenever faced with an "emotional" female patient, would draw in his notes a stick figure with a lightning bolt going into its head and write down a nonsensical diagnosis of "zigzybiasis," signifying "This patient is crazy." A pediatrician habitually marked his notes with a smiley face when a young patient had a good-looking mother...