Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 5, 1993 TAG: 9304030213
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SPONSORS TAINT SERIES ON MEDICINE
"Medicine at the Crossroads" is an impressive and exhaustive series, and the topic could hardly be timelier, but the program gets somewhat tangled up in its own credentials.PBS will air the eight-hour documentary series in two-hour installments each Monday night in April. The problem is not with the producers or with George Page, the authoritative narrator and co-producer; it's that the long list of funders and underwriters includes Pfizer, a major pharmaceutical firm, billed in the opening credits as "one of your partners in health care."
The high cost of drugs is certainly a key part of the health crisis that makes headlines daily and has attracted the attention of, among other prominent citizens, Hillary Rodham Clinton. But a series on medicine funded in part by a drug company is not likely to make much of a fuss about drug company profits, and this one doesn't.
"The Magic Bullet," sixth hour of the series (airing April 19), does take drug companies to task somewhat, but the strongest statements on the show are along the lines of, "The products made by scientists and drug companies often have a completely unexpected impact on patients."
Much of the hour is devoted to RU486, the controversial French pill that terminates pregnancies and may have therapeutic uses yet to be determined. The doctor who discovered the breakthrough, Etienne-Emile Baulieu, is interviewed and seen campaigning for its approval elsewhere in the world.
The sequences with Baulieu, perhaps unintentionally, suggest how profitable medicine can be at this level. He is seen jet-setting back and forth across the Atlantic on the pricey Concorde, and at one point is interviewed over a lavish gourmet meal in a high-class restaurant. A critic of the industry meanwhile complains about "the wining and dining and pocket-lining" done by drug firms lobbying Washington.
But many viewers may feel the program is pulling punches. Pfizer and the other funders probably had no direct control over the content of the programs, but their influence may have been felt anyway.
Even if the series should perhaps have more bite and bluntness, it still contains a wealth of rich material. Based on a viewing of the first six hours, it's clear that "Medicine at the Crossroads" is ambitious and compelling, the most comprehensive look TV has ever taken at this subject.
In the first hour, "Temple of Science," about modern teaching hospitals, we see doctors chatting dispassionately while, nearby, an indigent woman screams in pain. An intern says coldly, "I don't think she's going to live very long, but we can probably tune her up a little bit and get her out of the hospital." This episode gets into the arrogance of some in the medical profession, albeit without calling it arrogance.
In the second hour of tonight's premiere, "Code of Silence," doctors are examined more closely and more critically. We see young doctors meeting a roomful of cadavers for the first time, meet a specialist in England who has made it her practice to treat people who've been mistreated by other doctors, and encounter an old-time country doc in Japan who knows all his patients well and tells them things like, "You've gotten really fat."
Throughout the series, the producers obtained remarkably candid interviews with patients and doctors, and the camera eavesdrops on some shockingly intimate moments between the two.
The third hour (April 12) asks, "What is the role of medicine at the end of life?" and confronts the difficult issues raised by life-prolonging machines. There is a heart-wrenching cut from the image of a dying 82-year-old man being kept alive, technically, by life-support systems to a photograph of the man in his prime, seeming to be an entirely different person.
At such times and many others, and despite limitations built into it, "Medicine at the Crossroads" is as fascinating as not only the human body, but the human being, itself.
Washington Post Writers Group
"MEDICINE AT THE CROSSROADS," an eight-part series, begins tonight at 9 on WBRA (Channel 15). Tom Shales writes about television for The Washington
Post.