Monday, October 3, 2011

The Cradle Will Fall: by Mary Higgins Clark

About a doctor who transplants embryos, and a woman who cannot come to terms with loss of her perfectly healthy fetus for no known reason and with no pain or accident discovering to her horror that in fact her baby had been transplanted in another woman without knowledge, much less consent, of either of the two.

Then it was futuristic, perhaps. Today there is a lot done that is perhaps a little less crude but could have more devastating impacts on society tomorrow.

Medical practices meanwhile have improved little in treating patients, especially women, with any respect more than a useful object for study of science and a source of income that demands little and can be browbeaten into any treatment or whatever. Most changes in this attitude that need to be evolved have mostly changed attitudes of what needs to be said or thought as window dressing, and a deep hypocrisy, much like racism or gender discrimination in general ("you should not say that" or "don't think that way" is usually a pat response).
.........................