Bøger af Tony Holtzman

In his opening story, Tony Holtzman ridicules the world of medical meetings and the interplay of biomedical science, the mass media, and capitalism. He returns to medicine in the closing story, where he takes aim at the dream of winning a Nobel Prize, a not uncommon delusion. The stories in between are an eclectic assortment, touching lightly on sexism, racism, ageism, prejudice, climate change, and reality television. Far from ponderous or purposeful, the stories are amusing and suspenseful. Holtzman draws on his experience as a medical scientist at Johns Hopkins where he is now Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics.

The theft of unpublished papers on asbestos toxicity and a controversy over the meaning of a series of murals are the core of this novel. Dr. Norman Bethune drew the murals while he was a patient at the Trudeau tuberculosis Sanatorium in Saranac Lake NY in 1927. The asbestos papers were stolen from a research laboratory affiliated with the Sanatorium in 1953. The novel begins with the director of the laboratory telling the FBI that Communists at Trudeau are demanding that he publish the papers as part of a plot to bankrupt American asbestos manufacturers. While searching for the Communists, the FBI learns that Bethune declared himself a Communist ten years after he drew the murals. The murals are subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee for its hearing on subversion at Trudeau in the fall of 1953. Its major witness, an art historian, insists that the contents of the murals prove Bethune was a Communist when he drew them. This charge is flatly denied by those who knew Bethune when he was a patient at the Sanatorium. In an obscure old journal, Bethune wrote that the murals were about his struggle against tuberculosis; they had nothing to do with communism. The Committee harasses a Trudeau scientist, trying to get him to admit that the woman who became his wife was a Communist when she modeled for the murals before they were married. As a result of the FBI investigation and the subsequent hearings, two people die tragically, others lose their jobs, and the Trudeau facilities are threatened with closure.

The novel begins with the director of the Saranac research laboratory telling the FBI that Communists at Trudeau are demanding that he publish the papers as part of a plot to bankrupt American asbestos manufacturers. While searching for the Communists, the FBI learns that Dr. Norman Bethune declared himself a Communist ten years after he drew the murals. The murals are subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee for its hearing on subversion at Trudeau in 1953. Its major witness, an art historian, insists that the murals prove Bethune was a Communist. This charge is flatly denied by those who knew Bethune when he drew them. In an obscure old paper, Bethune wrote that the murals were about his struggle against tuberculosis; they had nothing to do with communism. The Committee harasses a scientist at Trudeau, trying to get him to admit that the woman who became his wife was a Communist when she modeled for the murals . As a result of the FBI investigation and the subsequent hearings, two people die tragically, others lose their jobs, and the Trudeau facilities are threatened with closure.