Charelle Warren
ENG 102H Dr. Tatum
Final Essay
April 26, 2012
Who’s Really the Good Doctor?
In the movie “Wit” directed by Mike Nichols and “You Don’t Know Jack” directed by Barry Levinson show two drastic differences of doctors and their patients. For years doctors have had to deal with deciding what is ethical and what is humane. Dictionary.com defines ethical as “being in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or practice” and it describe humane as “characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals, especially for the suffering or distressed”. In these two movies we see the exact difference between what acting humane and ethical really is.
In “Wit” the main character, Vivian Bearings, found out that she has stage four ovarian cancer. Dr. Kelekian, her main doctor is the doctor who tells Vivian about her diagnosis. The other doctor Jason was her secondary and an old student of hers. Throughout the movie Vivian is treated like a lab rat. They would perform tests on her and give her the biggest dosage of medicine without even asking how she was feeling. These doctors were working on the basis of ethics appose to being humane. The doctors were more worried about research than how she felt as a human.
Doctor Kevorkian in “You Don’t Know Jack” had a different way of dealing with his patients. He went out of his way to make sure he knew exactly how his patients felt. He made it his goal to give every patient their wish
