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Medical Ethics In The Film Awakenings, By Penny Marshall

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The movie, Awakenings, by Penny Marshall is an excellent story because it is based on a true story and to me real events are always more powerful than fiction. The movie seems to depict a particular disease and the drug used to treat it very accurately. The film is based upon the book with the same name, which was written by Dr.Oliver Sacks. “This paper will be presenting the powerful depiction of medical ethics and the value of existence.” The film Awakenings is testimony to the dream of a neurologist who transiently gave back “freedom” to his post-encephalitis patients, paralyzed by Parkinson’s disease for decades, treating them with what was considered a miracle drug: L-dopa. These awakenings opened his eyes to the tragedy: the …show more content…

The actors that portray EL patients with progressive states of the disease do an excellent job of simulating what is similar to catatonic behaviour. In particular, Robert de Niro as Leonard Lowe seems to portray the progression from awakening to L-dopa side effects to return to the progressive EL state well. When he is first given L-dopa in the film, he shows a gradual increase in physical and cognitive ability to what appears to be a normal state. Later, his behaviour is consistent with the side effects associated with …show more content…

Sayer uses the drug straight to human. Today L-dopa is used to help treat Parkinson's disease, which at the time of Sayer's experiment, was a new idea and is where his inspiration came from. L-dopa is synthetically made and cannot cross the blood-brain barrier and it creates dopamine to which can pass that barrier and therefore help the patient. He had no background using the medication. He did not test on anyone besides the people he thought he would benefit so things could have gone horribly wrong. Instead of following what he had originally planned to do with dosages, he got in the labs at night to give his patient more L-dopa. There was no planning on how the drug should be given and things could have gone for the worse. I do believe that he knew what he is doing but does that mean he is right in what he does. “According to Pile (2010) sometimes ethics don’t fit perfectly with the rest of the world and I think Sayer has his own way of determining the methods and ethics in this behaviour.” In this movie we are invited to meditate on the strangeness and wonder of human personality. Which is better to remain hopeless or to be given hope and then lose again? What the movie convey is the immense courage of the patients and the profound experience of their doctors, as in a small way they experience again what it means to be born, to open your eyes and discover to your astonishment that ”you” are

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