Medicine & Health

Terry talks with molecular geneticist Mary-Claire King. She is one of the scientists who's work is featured in the new PBS series, "The Secret of Life." For the past 17 years, her research has focused on finding the gene responsible for the type of breast cancer that is inherited. She believes she is now close to locating the gene.

Professor Uwe Reinhardt. He is a professor of Political Economy at Princeton University. He is also President of the American Association of Health Services Research. Reinhardt has written widely about reforming the U-S healthcare system in such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. He has argued for a universal plan for years now, saying it will control spiraling costs.

Biomedical ethicist Arthur Caplan. Caplan was on the Presidential task force that helped form the new health care proposal. He is the Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota. He is also a professor of surgery and philosophy there. In addition to numerous books and articles, Caplan writes a syndicated column; his work appears weekly in 40 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada.

Dr. Dean Ornish. He, along with other researchers, has developed a "lifestyle" program for reversing heart disease. Working with a group of heart patients, Ornish, has reversed the disease, thru diet, moderate exercise, and stress reduction. He recommends the program for everyone, not just those at risk for heart disease. Ornish relies on data from seven years of study on this group of patients. Recently the "lifestyle" program qualified for reimbursement by a major insurance company. It's the first time such a program has qualified.

Psychiatrist Peter D. Kramer wrote "Listening to Prozac," an examination of the larger issues behind drugs that reshape temperament. Prozac is the most widely prescribed antidepressant today, with some four and a half million users since its introduction in 1987. Kramer raises serious questions about this "miracle mood enhancer": are we headed into an age of cosmetic pharmacology?

Don Des Jarlais is an expert on AIDS and HIV infection among drug users. He's the Director of Research at the Beth Israel Medical Center's Chemical Dependency Institute in New York and the Deputy Director for AIDS Research, National Development and Research Institutes, New York. He's also a consultant on AIDS to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Centers for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization.

What does 'artistic temperament' really mean? In her new book, "Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament," Kay Jamison has studied the psychological makeup of many of our most revered artists--Byron, Tennyson, Van Gogh, Hemingway--and linked their genius to manic-depression. Jamison looks at current treatments for manic-depression, and considers their affect on a patient's ability to create. Kay Jamison is Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Medical writer Robin Marantz Henig is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, Mirabella, and Vogue. Her new book, "A Dancing Matrix" is about the work being done to understand viruses. The field has taken on new urgency since the spread of the AIDS virus. Hening says scientists have realized that emergence of a new virus is not as rare as previously though, and that it's caused mostly by human error rather than genetic mutation.

Rollin's 1976 best-selling book about surviving breast-cancer, "First, You Cry," is being reissued. She lost one breast to cancer in 1975; in 1984, she had the other breast removed. Rollin also wrote the book, "Last Wish," about helping her mother -- who was dying from ovarian cancer -- to die.

Biomedical ethicist Arthur Caplan. He discusses the right to die and the implications of doctor-assisted suicide -- specifically how Dr. Jack Kevorkian has been helping patients die. Caplan is Director of Biomedical Ethics and a professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Surgery at the University of Minnesota.