Using as his case in point the well-known Kimberly Bergalis incident—in which a dentist was suspected of having infected Bergalis and several other patients with the AIDS virus—Rom probes deeply into the question of how public health policy is made. As the principal investigator of the Government Accounting Office's inquiry into the federal Centers for Disease Control's handling of this case, Rom expected to find that the CDC had made major mistakes. Instead, he found the the agency to have been both competent and thorough. The author (Government and Public Policy/Georgetown Univ.) explores the reasons for criticism of the CDC's role by the media and by advocates of both patients' and health-care workers' interests. While finding that the HIV-positive dentist, David Acer, had indeed infected Bergalis and other patients, the CDC admitted that it was unable to determine how, and without this knowledge, it was hard-pressed to develop a policy aimed at preventing future incidents. After looking at the CDC's consideration of such issues as mandatory testing of health-care workers, practice restrictions, and patient notification, and its eventual development of some rather nebulous guidelines, Rom turns to the response of Congress and the actions by state legislatures, regulators, and courts. Their actions, he finds, have produced a mixture of ambiguous and contradictory rulings. The CDC, he concludes, is the proper agency for making health policy regarding HIV and medical personnel. However, it should have brought together advocates on all sides—patients, health-care workers, medical experts—and engaged them in seeking a common interest. Rom skillfully points out what that common interest is—improving the safety of both patients and health-care providers—and how focusing on competence rather than HIV status benefits both sides. Despite the provocative title, there's no sensationalism here- -just solid research and the calm and persuasive voice of reason.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-7879-0991-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1997
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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