Sunday, July 18, 2010

The Understanding

This Radio 4 Afternoon Play by P. G. Morgan is very nicely done. It is presented as part of ". . .a new series of Radio 4's Inside The Ethics Committee. . ." which begins this week.

Here we have issues of medical intervention, religious restrictions on such, the understanding between the patient and doctor, before and during the procedures, and the united front of belief between a husband and wife. All of it is expertly handled with post procedural interviews and flashbacks to the life and death hospital moments. This is a complex but lucid, gripping drama of emotions, faith, ethics and beliefs.

The questions of medical ethics are only going to be more confusing as powerful and costly methods continue to be discovered. We may find more and more of us reaching a point when we have to decide when we believe enough is enough. Or is that going to be just when whatever health insurance, state or private, will refuse to play the enormous bills for more?
This play deals with complications of childbirth and a religious faith that does not include blood transfusion.

Is playwright P. G. Morgan a man or woman?