Faculty Bibliography

A pediatrician discusses his experiences with an adult patient and the patient's family. For a relative or friend of a gravely ill patient, hope is an important and tenuous expression

The effects of high fevers in children from newborns to the terrible two's are discussed. The latest treatments and advice to parents are given

An in-house pediatrician gives a personal account of being in the delivery room when a baby is born with a nuchal cord. This delivery is compared to her own personal deliveries. The emotions experienced in the role of doctor are quite different than in the role of mother

A short story is presented

During the holidays it may be hard to tell whether a child has had too many candy canes or if he/she is really sick. Information is given on how to tell if a child is indeed sick, and what to do about it is discussed

'Strangers at the Bedside' is the story of how the 'responsible people doing the work' were joined, largely against their will, by the lawyers, the bioethicists, the theologians-and the government as well. David S. Rothman, a historian and a professor of social medicine at Columbia, argues that the entrance into medical decision-making of all these non-physicians actually began when the government, and the general public, began to worry about the ethics of medical research. The scrutinizing of human experiments, the discussion of ethical imperatives, the eventual regulation, Rothman claims, led to a similar discourse concerning the agonizing dilemmas of medical treatment-and non-treatment. Overall, Rothman argues, wartime conditions engendered urgency, and a utilitarian ethic that demanded sacrifices from all citizens for the common good-whether or not those citizens were capable of giving what we would now call informed consent. 'The lessons that the medical researchers learned in their first extensive use of human subjects was that ends certainly did justify means; that in wartime the effort to conquer disease entitled them to choose the martyrs to scientific progress.' It was a doctor named Henry Beecher who blew the whistle. In 1966, he published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, listing 22 instances of published research built on dubious ethics: live cancer cells injected into patients who were told only that they would be receiving 'some cells'; drugs withheld or new drugs tested. The subjects, Rothman points out, included soldiers, charity patients, mentally retarded people and other groups whose ability to consent freely was doubtful

A short story is presented

Perri Klass reviews 'Vital Lines: Contemporary Fiction About Medicine,' edited by Jon Mukand, a collection of essays by physicians

Chicken pox, an extremely contagious disease, is usually quite mild in children. However, chicken pox is very serious for newborn babies. The case of a four-year-old boy who had chicken pox while visiting his mother and newborn sister in the hospital is discussed. Varicella-zoster immune globulin (VZIG) was given to the newborn babies and their mothers who were exposed to chicken pox by this child

The controversy over Norplant, a contraceptive that some judges and legislators are attempting to use as part of court sentences in cases with female drug and child abusers, is examined. The state should not decide who should or should not be born