Welcome to the Business Journal Archives
Search for articles below, or continue to the all new BusinessJournalDaily.com now.
Search
Points of View
"A Doctor in the HouseFox Network develops a quality drama.The Fox TV network is finally doing the right thing with one of its new shows, House, scheduled to run at 9 p.m. Tuesdays. Its premier was delayed by Fox carrying Major League Baseball playoffs.After glimpsing the competition -- Hairspray Donald, cartoon characters eating larvae, and all the descendants of the cast from Lost in Space dumped into Purgatory -- some Fox executive must have realized his network had a sleeper on its hands with House. As a result, Fox has been showcasing this medical drama twice a week in hopes of attracting more viewers.As portrayed by Hugh Laurie (a skilled British actor with credits from Sense and Sensibility, the "Blackadder" series and the newly remade Flight of the Phoenix), Dr. Gregory House is a physician at a Midwestern teaching hospital. Crusty and unshaven, he looks as if he could use a shower. He has a limp (cause unknown) and uses a cane. He pops pills (real or candy) into his mouth and shows disrespect for his superiors -- who will not excuse him from clinical duties.It is almost as if he has been confined to the hospital as some form of punishment. When not in his sumptuous office, the acerbic healer may be found watching General Hospital on a pocket-sized television in the hospital chapel. Or he is advising a department store Santa Claus that nicotine is the drug of choice for active-bowel syndrome.Such is the hero/anti-hero to whom three brilliant acolytes have been assigned. Each week a beautiful young woman, a black and a prodigal seminarian must cope with a medical situation that starts simply enough but becomes perplexing. So it was when all the newborns in the hospital were exposed to a life-threatening virus communicated by a candy-striper with a cold.Even more baffling, a novitiate came to the clinic seeking treatment for a allergic reaction to dish water and nearly died of anaphylactic shock after being placed in an oxygen chamber, then a "clean" room.It is, to be sure, a stretch to suppose that Dr. House and his team will encounter something new and profound each week. Or that they, as do the geniuses at C.S.I., will conquer the microbe of the week in 60 minutes. Unlike the much overrated E.R., with its emphasis on crash carts and the loves of young doctors, there is an intelligence in the scripts written for House.And maybe it's just my impression, but I think the producers want to educate their viewers each week, to give them an appreciation of the incredible amount of information doctors must process when diagnosing symptoms and recommending treatments.I watched the Christmas program with two physicians who offered their opinions of what was wrong with the novitiate nun in real time. They predicted the progressive diagnoses and treatment (physician error in dosage of antihistamine, hysteria, possible connective bone disease, sexually transmitted disease) just as the script outlined.Once the key piece of information was discovered, a copper IUD, my associates immediately offered the correct diagnosis and treatment.One of the doctors also suggested an explanation for one of the mysteries surrounding the namesake of the program. In many hospitals, the staff refer to the institution as "the house." Our anti-hero of the year just may be a symbol of quality medicine as well."