Winter 2003
ARTICLES Images of our professional endowment: A credo for doctors in 2003
Medical education and health care in Hong Kong Commentary
Birthing babies (or not): Assisted reproduction in literature Through four literary works, the essay examines how women try, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to have babies outside the so-called "natural" arena of sexual reproduction with a husband/partner. Two of the texts involve the use of the relatively low-tech method of artificial insemination; these are fictional portraits of women wanting babies but not husbands or partners. The other two involve IVF and are autobiographical essays involving infertility in married couples. These literary account offer readers the experience of knowing beyond the hyper-rationality of science and clinical medicine, focusing on the feelings, beliefs, and experiences of four very particular women and/or their husbands or partners in assisted reproduction.
Inside out: The art of Joel-Peter Witkin
Swearing medical oaths, 1999
PERSPECTIVES For this I became a doctor? A newly minted young intern is sent in to see a terminal patient, not much older than himself. At first, the doctor can grant the patient's wish: effective pain control. But the questions keep coming, from both patient and doctor. Perhaps not unusually, it fell to the lowest member of the health care team to discuss prognosis and the reasons why such illness happens at all The intern also got to know the patient's wife. In a different way, her needs and suffering were just as acute. The intern makes promises to both of them and has the chance to make good on a few. In the end, of course, the patient could not be saved, but just as the intern was feeling that the tools of his trade were limited and inadequate, he learns that he did accomplish more than he thought.
POETRY Resonance Imaging A Mountain Tarn Before Blastocyst House Call Panic Attacked Can You Believe Medicine Today? Tree at the Edge of the Canyon |
