The Eight Questions to a New Idealism

In class on Wednesday, we spent a good part of the class debating Neil Ernst’s decision to file a claim to Child Protection Services on Lia Lee from The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Chapter 17 sheds some light on the whole debate as Anne Fadiman pursues the cause behind Lia’s ultimate seizure attack that affects her brain permanently. Fadiman discovers that it was, in fact, Western medicine that pseudomonas aeruginosa bacillus to take over in her blood. She does bring up the point that Lia would probably not have survived past infancy if she had been in Laos but poses the important question of “which had hurt her family more” (260).
What is interesting when Fadiman presents this information to Lia’s doctors at Merced, she says that Neil focused “not on his relationship with the Lees but on his choice of medication” (257) while another doctor Dan Murphy “was less interested in the Depakene than in the interpreters” (259). This is interesting to note what is most important to each of them. Dr. Ernst does mention the cultural barrier and how he tried the best that he could and had to give up some of his control. Dr. Murphy then goes on to talk about the demise of his idealism. This idealism is something that I believe many pre-med students and even many doctors possess in the US. It’s easy to believe in the Hippocratic oath and use this as the end-all, be-all and make all decisions accordingly. What needs to be brought into account is that the US is fortunately a melting pot of a nation and each culture, whether you like it or not, is going to be bringing different practices and beliefs with them that may contradict Western medicine. Dr. Ersnt and all of Lia’s other doctors had to learn the hard way and we can discuss until we are blue in the fact, but the real question is what can we do?
Luckily, Fadiman ends the chapter with a suggestion for solution. She brings up Arthur Kleinman’s “explanatory model” which sheds light on a patient’s history, opinions and medical problems. Would this have saved Lia Lee’s life if her doctors had used it from the beginning, who knows. But it does help show doctors that there is a level of understanding that should be taken into account for every patient, and this is a kind of idealism for the future that should be invested in.