 the Collector of Bedford Street
A film by Alice Elliott
New Day Films 2001
37 minutes (approx.)
The Collector of Bedford Street is a short documentary, nominated for an Academy Award that follows Larry Selman, the film maker's 60 year old neighbor. A community activist and fundraiser with developmental disabilities, Larry raises thousands of dollars for charity every year while he lives at the poverty level. Because of Larry's 20 years of service to his neighborhood, the community created a supplemental need adult trust fund for him. This was the first time that a group, rather than an individual's family did this. The film humanizes the story behind the abstract statistics of mental retardation, revealing how a community builds tolerance and understanding.
Questions for discussion:
- Did you have preconceived notions of mentally retarded people before you watched this film? How were those stereotypes affected?
- Reflect on the concept of “intelligence”. Do you think IQ is a fair measure of Larry’s “intelligence”?
- Larry has mixed feelings about the results of his IQ test. Why?
- Did any parts of the video make you uncomfortable? Why?
- Discuss the concept of community. How is yours like or unlike Larry’s?
- How do we balance a person’s right to autonomy versus our need to protect them?
More study guide and facilitation information is available at:
http://thecollectorofbedfordstreet.com
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 In Our Midst: Exploring the Long-Term Impact of Neonatal Intensive Care
Fanlight Productions
56 Minutes
Each year, the lives of thousands of premature newborns are saved by neonatal intensive care. The press and broadcast media celebrate these “miracle babies.” But what is life like for the children, who often leave the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) with multiple medical problems and developmental challenges? What is life like for their families? Filmmaker Richard Kahn spent almost a year following one such family. Their four children (three natural; one adopted) are all “graduates” of the NICU, and they represent a range of outcomes, from unimpaired survival to serious physical and learning deficits. Capturing the family’s extraordinary mutual devotion as well as the burdens of an unending regimen of care, In Our Midst, provides a glimpse into the little explored impact of modern medical technology.
“When the staff of the NICU discharged our child, it was as though they were waving goodbye at the dock. We had to make the voyage on our own.” – Mother of a NICU graduate
Extensive study guide
Available at http://www.fanlight.com/downloads/In.Our.Midst.pdf
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 Life and Death: Medical Ethics of the Schiavo Case
The News Hours with Jim Lehrer 2005
27 minutes
Life and Death: Medical Ethics of the Schiavo Case
Many who followed the Terri Schiavo case struggled to make sense of the flurry of opinions it generated. This NewsHour program, recorded during the last days of Terri Schiavo’s life, presents two opposing yet thoroughly reasoned perspectives on the issues. Beth Israel Medical Center neurologist Dr. Russell Portenov explains the medical justification for removing the feeding tube, while Dr. Robert George, professor or jurisprudence at Princeton University and a member of the President’s Council on bioethics, raises legal and moral questions surrounding the decision, Keeping its focus on the Schiavo controversy, the program also explores implications for other potential end-of-life situations. (27 minutes) © 2005
Dr. Robert George, Jurisprudence & Bioethics, Princeton Univ. – President’s Council on Bioethics
Dr. Russell Portenov, Neurology & Palliative Care, Beth Israel Medical Center
Questions for discussion:
- What are the most significant points each “expert” makes. How does it reflect their professional practice or personal bias?
What are some of the ramifications of each position on our society?
- Reflect on Dr. Portenov’s reply when asked what Ms. Schiavo will die from.
- What role should politics, law and ethics play in end-of-life decision making? How are they reflected in the video?
- Should financial concerns be part of end-of-life decision making?
- Are there any commonalities upon which a compromise could be built?
- Terri Schiavo’s plight is compared to Karen Ann Quinlan’s situation in the 1970’s. Is it a reasonable comparison? What might be considered significant variables?
- What responsibility do medical professionals have to evaluate and weigh new knowledge and technology against old paradigms of care?
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 Sound and Fury
Color/80 minutes
The opening scenes of this film depict Heather Artinian, a five year old deaf child who is interested in having a cochlear implant. Her parents, Peter and Mari Artinian, run the gamut of being supportive to being uncomfortable or even frightened of the idea of the cochlear implant. Peter describes it at one point as "scary and invasive", and that "society is trying to create robots". He states that signing is a natural form of communication and his life began when he learned to sign. Heather’s mother Mari investigates the possibility of having a cochlear implant herself, when she finds out it probably won’t improve her communication because it is more effective for small children whose speech and communication centers are still developing. At this point she begins to discourage the idea of Heather having a cochlear implant.
At the same time Peter’s brother Christopher and his wife Nita, both hearing, give birth to twins, one of whom is deaf, the other hearing. They also investigate cochlear implants and come to the opposite conclusion, that their son Peter should have a cochlear implant and participate in the immersion school that focuses only on verbal communication.
In one very poignant scene Heather Artinian signs all the reasons she wants to have a cochlear implant. She wants to be able to hear the birds sing and the phone ring, hear people talk in New York and Florida. She is a very bright and articulate child and this seems to add to her grandparents quest to have her be able to hear and communicate in the hearing world.
Points for discussion
- What is a culture?
- What is an intrinsic vs. an extrinsic characteristic of a person?
- Reflect on forcing a child to do something vs. providing opportunities when you are talking about something like a cochlear implant?
- What constitutes abuse?
- What does it mean to "act like a hearing person"?
- What does justice require for these children? For the parents?
Additional reading:
Rosner, Jennifer Lullabies for Sophia Hastings Center Report, November/December 2004
Sacks, Oliver Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf Vintage Books, 2000 (copyright 1989, 1990)
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 Sound and Fury: Six Years Later
Aronson Film Associates, Inc., 2006
Color/29 minutes
“Sound and Fury: Six Years Later” is an engaging look at what has happened to the Artinians since their family saga captured audiences around the world in “Sound and Fury” in 2000. “Sound and Fury” ended with 6-year-old Heather being denied the cochlear implant she wanted to enable her to hear. With the family painfully divided over this, Heather’s parents moved their family away to a signing community to bring their kids up in the signing deaf world. In this stand-alone follow-up film we learn that Heather finally did get the implant at 9 years-old, as did her 2 younger brothers, her mother, her deaf aunt and her 2 deaf cousins. Now 12, Heather is the only deaf child in her Long Island school. She plays basketball and volleyball, stays near the top of her class and is popular with her hearing peers. Though she got the implant “late”, Heather’s speech is understandable and she delights in her communication skills. Heather still signs like a native and slides easily between the hearing world she is now a part of and the signing deaf world of her parents. Heather’s father, who was so resistant to the implant in “Sound and Fury,” says that through observation and education, he has learned how useful the implant can be for deaf children and how glad he is that his children have it. This resilient family is a remarkable testament to family devotion, tireless responsibility to children and enduring love.
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Suicide Missions: Human Guinea Pigs
A&E Television Network 2001/50 Minutes
A History Channel documentary program that showcases the people who have furthered medical, scientific and technological endeavors by volunteering to test the limits of knowledge. Segments span the decades to include early undersea exploration; the Nuremburg trials and the ethics of human experimentation; human testing and biological warfare in the 1950’s; atomic power and exposure to a-bomb blasts at Camp Nevada, US Army research involving "conscientious objectors" and more recent flight and altitude testing on humans.
What motivates people to risk their lives, and how do we justify that risk?
Discussion Questions:
- Who should be candidates for experimental investigation?
- At what point did consent begin to play a role in experimentation? Why?
- How does one evaluate and weigh potential harm? Acceptable risk?
- How can we balance individual risk with the greater good?
- What role does patriotism play in motivation? Responsibility? Altruism?
- What other motivating factors exist?
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 Thin: If it takes dying to get there, so be it
Home Box Office, Inc., 2006
102 Minutes
The HBO documentary film Thin takes us inside the walls of Renfrew Center, a residential facility for the treatment of women with eating disorders, closely following four young women (ages 15-30) who have spent much of their lives starving themselves – often to the verge of death. The film deftly chronicles the pervasiveness of disordered eating behaviors, as well as the failure of our current health-insurance industry to address its clients’ needs, while never shifting focus from the women themselves. Director Lauren Greenfield documents with astonishing depth the daily rituals, spontaneous friendships and startling swings between recovery and relapse that make up life at the center. The result is a powerful new insight into one of our society’s most insidious open secrets.
Questions for discussion:
- Compare and contrast each main character. What makes them similar? What makes them dynamically different?
- How would you characterize each woman’s motivation to “get better”?
- Reflect on the concept of “trust”. How does it play out among the clients? How does it play out between the clients and the staff?
- What part do family dynamics play in each woman’s situation? Parent/Child? Twin sisters?
- What do you think of the group therapy sessions? The individual sessions with staff?
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 Who Plays God? Medicine, Money, and Ethics in American Health Care
Produced by WETA-TV, Washington DC
120 Minutes
This program, Who Plays God? Medicine, Money, and Ethics in America Health Care, explores a variety of life-and-death situations to illustrate the spectrum of highly controversial ethical decisions made on a daily basis in modern American medicine. Hosted by ABC News medical correspondent George Strait, and featuring noted authorities such as health-care economist Uwe Reinhardt, the program takes an in-depth look at the decisions that underlie the use of health-care dollars. When is life support provided and stopped? Who gets the transplants, the best technology and treatments? Who lives longer and who does not? The program features five segments that portray choices concerning prolonged life support, the painful struggle of extremely premature babies, the allocation of organ transplants, the crises that accompany the inaccessibility of health insurance, and the often thwarted desire to die with dignity.
Questions for discussion:
- What exactly do we mean by "playing God?" What does such a title suggest about our notion of God
- Jim Steen, the man who died waiting for a new lung, said that he could not ask his family to decide whether he was “worth” all of the time and massive medical expenses in order to prolong his life. Who has the right to decide which patients will get life-saving treatments? Should committees and society at large be responsible for deciding, for example, who will be placed on the organ transplant list, or is it a family/personal decision?
- In the West, the struggle to be healthy in the midst of illness is often seen as the “battle between good and evil.” Death is typically seen as defeat or failure. Is our Western philosophy of “good vs. evil” helpful? Harmful? Would a change in philosophy/mindset affect our approach to medicine/healthcare?
- In general, do doctors in America structure a patient’s potential treatment plan with resources (such as limited money) in mind? Should Uwe Reinhart have been more upset with his father’s physician in Germany for not offering him aggressive treatments?
- Why is it that we spend so much money at the end of life and so little for preventative care earlier in life? Have we become “trapped by technology?”
- Christopher’s mother must decide whether or not to take her newborn baby off of life support. She states: “No one ever wants to make that decision, particularly about their own child, more so an infant who is only six days old.” Is every parent/newborn entitled to such drastic treatment when the prognosis is so futile? Does it make a difference that Christopher’s mother is on Medicaid?
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 Worlds Apart: A Four-Part Series on Cross-Cultural Healthcare
By Maren Grainger-Monsen, MD, and Julia Haslett, Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics
Produced by Fanlight Productions, 2003
Mohammad Kochi's Story - 14 min
Justine Chitsena's Story - 11 min
Robert Phillips' Story - 10 min
Alicia Mercado's Story - 13 min
Worlds Apart tells the stories of four individuals and their families: Mohammad Kochi, Justine Chitsena, Robert Phillips, and Alicia Mercado. Mr. Kochi is a 63-year-old man from Afghanistan who is diagnosed with stomach cancer. He agrees to have surgery, but later refuses his oncologist’s recommendation for chemotherapy due to religious beliefs, language barriers, and family conflict. Justine Chitsena, a 4-year-old from Laos, has an atrial septal defect (a hole in the muscle wall of her heart) which her doctors’ feel should be repaired by surgery. Her mother is considering the operation but her grandmother is opposed. They are part of an ethnic minority in Southeast Asia called the Khmu, and have strong cultural beliefs and traditional healing practices as well as mistrust of Western medicine that give rise to this conflict. Robert Phillips is an African American man in his mid-thirties who has been on hemodialysis for end-stage renal disease and is hoping for a renal transplant, which will greatly improve his life. He speaks very eloquently and candidly about his experiences with medicine as a bureaucracy and about the racial disparities that he has witnessed and experienced. Alicia Mercado is a 60-year-old Puerto Rican woman living in New York’s “Hell’s Kitchen” neighborhood, who has struggled with diabetes, hypertension, and asthma for years. The many social problems she faces as a Spanish-speaking woman living alone, and he fears about reliance on medication, put her chronic illness management into a different perspective. Filmed in patients’ homes, neighborhoods, and places of worship, as well as in hospital wards and community clinics, these unique trigger films follow patients and families from a variety of backgrounds as they face critical medical decisions. The Worlds Apart series offers an invaluable tool for raising awareness about sociocultural barriers to patient-provider communication, and the way they affect the healthcare of culturally and ethnically diverse patients.
Facilitator’s Guide by Drs. Alexander Green, Joseph Betancourt, and Emilio Carrillo is available providing patient background information, suggestions and information for the facilitator plus questions to use in small group settings.
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