“Crammed with provocative insights, raw emotion, and heartbreaking dilemmas,” ( The New York Times ) First, Do No Harm is a powerful examination of how life and death decisions are made at a major metropolitan hospital in Houston, as told through the stories of doctors, patients, families, and hospital administrators facing unthinkable choices. What is life worth? And when is a life worth living? Journalist Lisa Belkin examines how these questions are asked and answered over one dramatic summer at Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas. In an account that is fascinating, revealing, and almost novelistic in its immediacy, Belkin takes us inside a major hospital and introduces us to the people who must make life and death decisions every day. As we walk through the hallways of the hospital we meet a young pediatrician who must decide whether to perform a risky last-ditch surgery on a teenager who has spent most of his fifteen years in a hospital; we watch as new parents battle with doctors over whether to disconnect their fragile, premature twins from the machine that keeps them breathing; we are in the operating room as a poor immigrant, paralyzed from a gunshot in the neck, is asked by doctors whether or not he wishes to stay alive; we witness the worry of a kidney specialist as he decides whether or not to transfer an uninsured baby to the county hospital down the road. We experience critical moments in the lives of these real people as Belkin explores challenging issues and questions involving medical ethics, human suffering, modern technology, legal liability, and financial reality. As medical technology advances, the choices grow more complicated. How far should we go to save a life? Who decides? And who pays? "A powerful, true story of life and death in a major metropolitan hospital...Harrowing... An important book." THE NEW YORK TIMES What is life worth? And what is a life worth living? At a time when America faces vital choices about the future of its health care, former NEW YORK TIMES correspondent Lisa Belkin takes a powerful and poignant look at the inner workings of Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas, telling the remarkable, real-life stories of the doctors, patients, families, and hospital administrators who must ask--and ultimately answer--the most profound and heart-rendng questions about life and death. Lisa Belkin writes about American social issues. Her many roles at The New York Times included national correspondent, medical reporter, contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and creator of both the Life’s Work column and the Motherlode blog. She has served as a senior columnist at the HuffPost and chief national correspondent for Yahoo News . Belkin is the author of three books, including Show Me A Hero, which was made into a David Simon HBO miniseries with the same title. She teaches narrative nonfiction writing and reporting at the Columbia University School of Journalism. The Committee The Committee It was standing room only in Room 3485 the day the committee voted to let Patrick die. Nearly three dozen people crammed the small windowless room, outnumbering the two dozen thinly padded chairs. After the seats were filled, latecomers propped themselves against the walls, careful to keep their distance from the dusty chalkboard. Whether sitting or standing, everyone was fidgeting. The emerald carpet only partly silenced the shifting and tapping of their feet. Lin Weeks’s secretary, Ellen Nuñez, always thinks herself lucky when she can book the committee into Room 3485. In Room 4487, the classroom one floor up, the blue-gray carpet is pocked with cigarette burns. Too seedy for her boss’s pet committee. Room 5488, one floor higher still, is often reserved for CPR training, and its yellow-white stains, the ghosts of former puddles, are from the Clorox used to disinfect the mannequins’ mouths. Too seedy and too depressing. But in this room, Ellen thinks, the varied greens of the carpet, chairs, and chalkboard are calming, or as calm as one can ask for in a hospital. And some pretense of calm is important for these meetings about life and death. Any soothing effect of the decor, however, was lost on Dr. Javier Aceves, the young pediatrician struggling with Patrick’s case. He sat at one end of the long wooden table, with his back to the door and his tired eyes scanning the audience of committee members. Following procedure, he began the session by reciting the basic facts, speaking in the shorthand monotone that is expected at meetings in hospitals. “Patrick Dismuke is a fifteen-year-old boy, well known to this committee, who is currently in the pediatric critical care unit on a ventilator,” he said. “His current hospitalization began two months ago, and this is his second prolonged hospitalization this year…” He needn’t have bothered. Everyone in the room knew Patrick. In fact everyone at Hermann Hospital knew Patrick. He had been a patient there for