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
I have chosen to discuss the case of Terri Shiavo which was a very big ethical case back in 2005. She had been left on a ventilator for 15 years. So let’s start from the beginning. On February 25, 1990 Terri Schiavo had a cardiac arrest that was causes by extreme hypokalemia (low potassium) brought on by an eating disorder (Quill, 2005). As a result of this cardiac arrest Terri developed severe hypoxic – ischemic encephalopathy which is another way of saying lack of oxygen to the brain (Quill, 2005). During this period she exhibited no evidence of brain function and eventually scans of her brain showed severe atrophy of her cerebral hemispheres (Quill, 2005). Her electroencephalograms were fat, indicating no functional activity of the
Awakenings is a 1973 nonfiction book by Oliver Sacks later on in 1990 became a film directed by Penny Marshall. The movie is based on Oliver Sacks's memoir which tells the story of encephalitic lethargica survivors as they undergo treatment with Dr.Sacks. He treated his patients with the then-new drug L-DOPA which was being used to treat Parkinson’s disease. Dr.Sacks believed that the encephalitic lethargica patients had suffered from a form of Parkinson’s that was so advanced which caused them to freeze and become statue like.
Despite the differences we may perceive between two situations, often there is a common factor that link them together, both in life and works of fiction. These connections are evident between Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon, and Penny Marshall’s Awakenings. Flowers for Algernon is a novel, and Awakenings is a film. Flowers for Algernon follows a fictitious scientific concept, whereas Awakenings includes plausible scenarios based on real events. Yet, though both works have their differences, they are connected by the evident similarities in theme and the messages and meaning they intend to convey to their audiences.
The movie flowers for Algernon and awakenings are both medical breakthroughs, but are yet both the same in some areas and then different in other areas. The movie awakenings is about a doctor named Oliver sacks who is helping out a patient who has Parkinson's disease and is in a frozen state that allows him not to be able to understand people how we do. Dr. Sacks ended up finding out about a drug called L-Dopa that then allows the patient with parkinson's to come out of his frozen state. He then gives the drug to the patient with orange juice, but it doesn’t work on him so then he gave the patient a very high dose of the drug with milk. After he did that it allowed the patient to come out of the frozen state. After it started to work he gave
Throughout our lives, we are plagued by the notion of ‘ethics’ or morals - the basis of our everyday behavior. The medical field is no exception, with doctors constantly reminded of the ethical duties they must carry out for each of their patients. An example of unethical doctors is demonstrated in Daniel Keyes’s short story, Flowers for Algernon. The story features Charlie Gordon, a man with an intellectual disability who strives to become smarter. He is a candidate for a new surgical procedure that is used to triple one’s intelligence which was directed by Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur. Although the procedure holds promise for helping a vast amount of people, Dr. Nemur and Dr. Strauss acted unethically by selecting Charlie to undergo the operation because they did not finish testing the procedure and because Charlie was unable to make a proper decision.
The psychological theme/focus would be Neuroscience (Chapter 2) because the patients have Parkinson’s disease. When a person has Parkinson’s disease, their brain stops producing the neurotransmitter called dopamine, affecting their nervous system. Dopamine is responsible for transmitting signals in between the nerve cells of the
Recently I (and many others) have read the story “Flowers for Algernon, and the movie “Awakenings”.
The current Georgia Southern calendar system has major problems. One problem, is the numerous amounts of calendars students and faculty have to use just to stay up to date on university activities. Some of the calendars are Grades First for student advisement, folio for class schedules and assignment due dates, IMLeagues for intramural sports, a calendar for official school sporting events and a calendar for school activities. Due to the numerous amount of calendars, there is no way to easily view multiple calendars in one location, causing major inconvenience for all university staff and students. Additionally having each calendar view look and operate completely different shows the lack of cohesion amongst all GSU systems. Having many calendars
It is thought that Meno's paradox is of critical importance both within Plato's thought and within the whole history of ideas. It's major importance is that for the first time on record, the possibility of achieving knowledge from the mind's own resources rather than from experience is articulated, demonstrated and seen as raising important philosophical questions.
Do you like gong to the hospital? Unless you're addicted to painkillers, probably not. No one enjoys being poked and prodded, even if the person poking you has good intentions. This rule makes it extremely difficult to view patient care with objectivity, especially since we almost exclusively see care through our loved ones or ourselves. However, watching the film Awakenings allowed me to do exactly that since I was neither attached to the sanatorium's doctors or patients. The opinion I came to, at least on patient care displayed in the film, was that the treatment provided seemed to be medically and ethically sound.
Professionals in every field are always confronted with some kind of ethical issues. It has however been noted that these ethical issues become high in magnitude and extent when public officials are involved. Due to the involvement of human life, an industry like healthcare holds ethics in highest regard. Even though these healthcare practitioners are highly trained to deal with issues of these kinds, their decisions can sometimes have a lasting impact on their professional and personal lives (Edwards 2009).
In the movie The Doctor they showed positive professional and negative behaviors. Some of the positive professional things are that Dr. Mackee told his interns to not call someone terminal if they aren’t dying or are already dead. Dr. Mackee talks differently to his patients now that he knows that he has cancer. Dr. Mackee became friends with another cancer patient named June Ellis. Dr. Mackee helps a patient that had a stroke and that has a lisp caused by having the secure and that patient is suing his practice because he blames them for him having the secure but Dr. Mackee sees that he needs help so he goes and tells him that he will have someone come and get Mr. Richards keys out of his car and that Dr. Mackee will have them left at the front desk. Nurse Nancy finally sang when Dr. Mackee went in for his surgery to remove his tumor. Dr. Mackee finally spoke after his surgery and told his wife that he loves her and then they were happy because they didn’t know if he would be able to speak again after having the surgery because the tumor was located in his voice box and they risked losing his vocal cords.
Charcot examined a large group of patients within Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, he had developed a way to observe tremors in action and at rest. “He noted that the patients with action tremor had accompanying features of weakness, spasticity, and visual disturbance. In contrast, those with rest tremor differed in having rigidity, slowed movements, a typical hunched posture, and very soft spoken.” (Goetz 2011) Charcot early tremor studies helped to establish Parkinson’s Disease through his very high publicized findings that neurological entity could be confidently be diagnosed. In 1957 a Swedish scientist Arvid Carlsson found out that dopamine in the brain region that is important for movement control. He showed that the levels of dopamine can be reduced in animals to cause symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease and also by giving the animals levodopa (L-dopa) to reverse the symptoms of PD. PD is second most common neurodegenerative after Alzheimer’s Disease and the most common movement disorder. Over 60,000 people here in the United States are diagnosed every year but they say the numbers can be much higher with undiagnosed people out there but over one million people live with Parkinson daily.10 million people worldwide live with Parkinson’s Disease and April 11th is World Parkinson’s Day. On April 11th, 2017 marked 200 years since James Parkinson publicized his essay.
mind, the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was one of the greatest empires of all
“…She’s somethin’ of a cunt, ain’t she Doc?” Although Milos Foreman’s character, Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), put his opinion of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) in the most vulgar of terms, he was not so far from the truth. In the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Nurse Ratched’s treatment and care of the patients was unethical when compared to the standards one would expect of a health care administrator. She used control over her patients to ensure order, without regard to the feelings and concerns of the patients. This issue is presented by the director, Milos Foreman, through symbolism, characterization and scenes. This, in turn, determines how the director wants us, as viewers, to feel about the issue.