Health & Medicine

Senior Editor at National Review, Richard Brookhiser. Recently the conservative magazine has come out in favor of some kind of drug legalization. Brookhiser is also a columnist for The New York Observer. (Interview by Barbara Bogaev)

Ethan Nadelmann, Director of The Lindesmith Center, a research center devoted to broadening the debate on drug policy, and looking at strategies that have been overlooked or ignored. (The Lindesmith Center is located in New York City, 212-887-0695) (Interview by Barbara Bogaev)

Laura Kaplan is the author of the new book, "The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service," (Pantheon Books). In 1969 this underground abortion service began operation in Chicago, four years before Roe v. Wade. The members of "Jane" were lay-persons who learned how to perform abortions themselves. Laura Kaplan was a member of Jane. She was also a founding member of a Chicago-based women's health-care center. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW).

Surgeon for the International Committee of the Red Cross Chris Giannou. For almost 15 years he has been a surgeon in war torn parts of the world in Burundi, Somalia, and in a Palestinian Refugee Camp. As such he has seen the devastation on human beings from land mines Giannou is currently leading the Red Cross's campaign for a ban on anti-personnel land mines worldwide, which kill or injure hundreds of civilians each week. (Giannou has been on the show a number of times.

Emmy award winning actor Kelsey Grammer. The former co-star of "Cheers" and the current star of "Frasier," has written his memoir, "So Far." (Dutton). Grammer, who got his start in classical theatre, is now known for his comic gifts in "Frasier" which is one of television's top ten shows.

Novelist R.S. Jones. His first novel, Force of Gravity was published in 1991. One reviewer called it, "a moving, acutely intelligent story about going insane." He's just published his second novel, Walking on Air (Houghton Mifflin) about a man who is dying of AIDS. A reviewer for The New York Times writes, "The novel's power resides in its almost total refusal to do anything but starkly describe this process, to trace the effects of the disease on this suffering man and his two friends. It rings true from start to finish."

Dublin actor and sculptor Corban Walker. He is making his film debut in "Frankie Starlight." The film is based on the novel "The Dark of Cork" by American author Chet Raymo about a dwarf who is an amateur astronomer who is love with beautiful women and the stars. The film is produced by Noel Pearson who also produced "My Left Foot." Walker is "of small stature." The film also stars Gabriel Byrne and Matt Dillon. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE REVIEW SEGMENT)

Felice Picano talks about losing 74 friends to AIDS. He recently came across a list with 75 people who attended his 40th birthday party in 1984. All but one....who is unaccounted for have died from AIDS.

Temple Grandin is one of the nation’s top designers of livestock facilities. She is also autistic. In her book, Thinking in Pictures: and other reports from my life with Autism she describes how her inner-autistic world has led her to develop animal empathy. She is currently an assistant professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Her new book is published by Doubleday 1995. Grandin was the subject of Oliver Sack’s 1993 New Yorker article An Anthropologist on Mars.

Actress Mary Tyler Moore. She starred in the Emmy award television show "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," and the film "Ordinary People." She is now starring in a new CBS series "New York News," a drama about life at a fictional New York newspaper, and has recently written her autobiography, "After All," (Putnam's Sons).

Co-founders of Brooklyn's Bedford Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corp. James "Rocky" Robinson and Joe Perez. They began the corp in 1988, after watching people die because the Ambulances responded too slowly to calls. (There are 39 volunteer ambulance corps in New York City). They are the focus of a new "The American Promise" PBS documentary. (The program premiered October 1).

Broadcast journalist John Merrow. He's the anchor and Executive Editor of "The Merrow Report" a quarterly series of documentaries on PBS that examines education and surrounding issues. Their latest documentary is "Attention Deficit Disorder: A Dubious Diagnosis?" In the documentary Merrow disputes the widely held belief that Ritalin, the drug given to children with Attention Deficit Disorder, is not "dangerous and addictive." Merrow also found that the drug has been overprescribed, and that some kids have begun to abuse it.

Professor Richard Foulds. He teaches at the University of Delaware. He's the father of a child with A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder) and a member of C.H.A.D.D. a non-profit organization directed by parents of children with ADD.

Marc Mauer is a co-author for a new study that says there has been a sharp increase over the past five years in the number of African-American males age 20-29 in jail, on probation or on parole. The study finds, on any given day, one in three black men in their 20s is under some form of court supervision. Five years ago, a similar study found that the percentage at one in four blacks. The study is titled Young Black Americans and the Criminal Justice System: Five Years Later. it's two authors are Marc Mauer and Tracy Huling.

Novelist Kaye Gibbons. She's the author of several acclaimed novels: Ellen Foster and Charms for the Easy Life. One reviewer says "Gibbon's brilliance lies in examining with unsentimental tenderness a family poised on the brink of disaster." Gibbons has a new novel, Sights Unseen (Putnam) about a girl's life with her manic-depressive mother. Gibbons herself has the illness, and she'll talk with Terry about that.

Psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison is an authority on manic-depression, and the author of the 1993 book Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, (Free Press/MacMillan). Recently Jamison disclosed her own 30-year battle with manic-depression in the new memoir, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (Knopf). Jamison is Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Steve Vineberg reviews the new film "Jeffrey" based on the Paul Rudnick play about sex in the age of AIDS.

Neurologist William Langston. His work plunged him into a medical mystery, and a hot political controversy about the ethics of medicine. In 1982 Langston was called in to examine a number of "frozen" patients, young men and women in the San Francisco Bay Area who suddenly could neither move or speak, though conscious. Langston recognized the signs of Parkinson's disease, and determined that these patients had all used the same batch of tainted heroin. Langston prescribed L-dopa, a treatment for Parkinson's which only provided short-term relief.

Lonny Shavelson writes about five people who were considering assisted suicide. His book A Chosen Death: The Dying Confront Assisted Suicide explores the agonizing dilemma that family and friends must face in deciding whether to assist. Shavelson argues in favor of legalized Physician-assisted suicide. Shavelson is a writer, photojournalist and emergency-room physician living in Berkeley, California. A Chosen Death is published by Simon and Shuster 1995.

Monologist, actor and writer Spalding Gray. He's written and performed several monologues including, "Monster in a Box" about all the distractions that prevented him from completing his novel, Impossible Vacation, and Swimming to Cambodia about filming a movie in Cambodia. Now Gray has a new monologue and book about his eye problems, and his adventures in the mainstream and alternative health care industries. It's called Gray's Anatomy. (Vintage Books).