Health & Medicine

Abrams is the executive producer and creator of the ABC series Lost about a group of survivors from an airplane crash marooned on an island. He also acts as the creator and executive producer of the series Alias. And he wrote the screenplays for the films Armageddon, Forever Young, and Regarding Henry.

Investigative reporters Donald Barlett and James Steele's new book is Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business, and Bad Medicine. Bartlett and Steel have worked together for 30 years, winning two Pulitzer Prizes. They are currently editors-at-large at Time magazine

Dr. Rowan Gillies is the International President of Midecins Sans Frontihres (Doctors Without Borders). He is a medical doctor and surgeon from Sydney, Australia. Dr. Gilles began working with Doctors Without Borders in 1998 as a field doctor in Afghanistan. Since then he has worked with the organization in Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Liberia. He recently returned from Sudan.

Dr. Jerry Avorn is a Harvard Medical school researcher and clinician. His new book, Powerful Medicines, uses patient vignettes, scientific critique and statistics to examine the benefits and side effects of prescription drugs.

Journalist Jon Cohen recently finished a four-part series on HIV and AIDS in Asia for the Science Magazine. In researching the series, he traveled to six countries and talked to doctors, patients, public health officials, sex workers and drug users. Cohen has been writing about the AIDS epidemic for 15 years. His book on the search for a vaccine is called Shots in the Dark.

Dr. Mark Hochberg is the CEO of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, a private medical society that was founded in 1787 that includes the fourth largest medical historical library in the country, and the Mutter Museum. He'll talk about his colleague Gretchen Worden.

(Rebroadcast from Nov. 5, 2002.) Worden was director of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. She died on Aug. 2 at the age of 57, from a brief illness. She turned the little-known medical museum into a museum with a worldwide reputation. The museum was founded in the 19th century. It originated with the collection of Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter who gathered unique specimens for teaching purposes. It exhibits medical deformities, pathologies and medical anomalies, like the horned woman, the man with the giant colon, deformed fetuses and a plaster cast of the Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker.

He'll address the strict drug regulations that put Elaine Bartlett, the subject of the book, Life on the Outside, in jail. The regulations are known as the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Clyne is the son of Albany County judge John Clyne, who handed Bartlett a sentence of 20 years to life in state prison.

Journalist Jennifer Gonnerman's new book is Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett. It's an account of Bartlett's struggle to get out and stay out of jail. Bartlett spent 16 years in prison for a single sale of cocaine. Gonnerman follows Bartlett as she is released from prison at 42.

Daszak is the executive director of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine. The program is designed to study the environmental changes brought on by humans and the links between animal, human and ecosystem health. The consortium is interested in finding out how infectious diseases like West Nile virus, malaria and other emerging diseases move between populations, or depend on environmental conditions.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews the final episode of Fraiser.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new documentary Super Size Me

Carley is the executive director of GRASP, The Global and Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership. In 2000, he and his then 4-year-old son were diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. GRASP works to educate the public about the disorder.

Volkmar is a leading researcher in Asperger's Syndrome, generally considered to be a form of autism characterized by deficits in social interaction and non-verbal communication. In the early 1990s, Volkmar led the team that helped develop the definition of autism used by the American Psychiatric Assoc. He is the Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology at the Yale University Child Study Center.

He died Monday at the age of 75. In 1964, his book Last Exit To Brooklyn, shocked readers with its salty language and explicit portrayal of prostitutes, thugs, ex-cons and striking dock workers along the Brooklyn waterfront in the 1950s. Selby's other books included The Room, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. (This interview was originally broadcast on May 4, 1990.)

Barry's new book is The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. In 1918, the influenza virus emerged, and in the next year killed millions of people. He writes "before that worldwide pandemic faded away in 1920, it would kill more people than any other outbreak of disease in human history." Scientists are still trying to figure out why the virus spread so rapidly and killed so efficiently. The story has relevance today as scientists believe we are due for another flu pandemic.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Hellboy, the new action film based on the Dark Horse comic books by Mike Mignola.

He's a former senior producer for CBS News and CNN with three Emmys to his credit. For the past 30 years he's lived with multiple sclerosis, even continuing to work in a war zone shortly after the diagnosis and with failing eyesight. He's written a new memoir called Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness/A Reluctant Memoir.

Health and Science writer Carl Zimmer's new book is Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain-and How it Changed the World. It's about Thomas Willis, the scientist whose research on the workings of the brain during the 17th century became the basis of modern neurology. Zimmer's work appears regularly in The New York Times, National Geographic, Newsweek, Discover, Natural History, and Science. He is also a John S. Guggenheim Fellow and received the Pan-American Health Organization Award for Excellence in International Health Reporting.

Goemaere is head of Doctors Without Borders ( Medecins Sans Frontieres) in South Africa and a leading AIDS activist for South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign. He was recently featured on a Frontline report, "AIDS Treatment for Africa: The South African Struggle," that appeared on PBS.