Boob tube fare

A few weeks ago when I revamped the list of links on this blog, I tried putting the Independent Women's Forum in it, but it kept leading to a broken link. Haven't tried again since then but here's an excerpt from a piece posted at the blog (called "Inkwell") --

First, Do Harm

I’ve watched only one episode of "Grey’s Anatomy"--because the spectacle of watching doctors who could be operating on me tomorrow having adulterous sex in what were supposed to be patient consulting rooms proved a bit much.

It wasn’t so much that it strained the bounds of morality. Worse, it strained the bounds of credulity. Or at least I hope that’s not the way it was when I had minor surgery at my local university hospital a couple of weeks ago. That episode of "Grey’s" also featured an in-ward prom (yes, you read that right, a high-school prom in honor of the chief of surgery’s cancer-stricken daughter, a patient), in which all the comely young doctors got dolled up in tuxes and evening gowns and waltzed around the surgical equipment under a disco ball--until the fiance of one of the youthful surgeons, also a patient at the hospital, upped and died--whereupon she climbed into the hospital bed with his corpse, evening gown and all. No, I don’t think so, I said to myself.

That episode that had me resolving "never again!" for "Grey’s" involved a heart transplant--to that very fiance. The story was that he had been on a waiting list for that transplant--so his doctor-girlfriend, an intern at the hospital, fudges around with his medical records to make him sicker in order to move him to the list’s very top, ahead of several other people even worse off than he. As you can imagine, such conduct is an extraordinary breach of medical ethics, not to mention lawsuit-generator if, say, the folks bumped down the translplant list ever found out. The hospital conducted an investigation, but all the rest of the beautiful young interns--who knew perfectly well what happened and even gave her a hand--played "I Am Spartacus" and kept mum, thwarting the investigators and playing them for fools. Then, the fiance, after doing well with his new heart for a couple of days, suddenly did the flat EKG thing. Hence the scene with the evening gown and the corpse--played for high pathos.

Read more at Independent Women's Forum