Doctor Misdiagnosed the Point of ‘Patch Adams’

The examination of “Patch Adams” by Andrew G. Kadar (billed as a practicing physician and freelance writer) results in a rather nicely written but sadly very poor diagnosis (“Medical Schools Do Teach Humanity,” Jan. 4). Writer Kadar seems to understand that one can “take some liberties with the facts” of a true story to “create compelling drama,” but Dr. Kadar totally misreads the picture as an attack on medical practitioners rather than a wacky but concerned assault on a medical establishment gone awry.

The good doctor is lucky to have gone to a medical school that held “small group seminars on improving our communications with patients” (dare one hunger for large ones?), but to extrapolate from this that a “principal goal of medical education” is “to maintain humanity and compassion” and further suggest that medical students “receive training to help them treat all . . . people with compassion and respect” leaves one with the question, “What happened?”

The movie “Patch Adams,”complete with composite characters and the necessary compression of time a motion picture format requires of those trying to depict the high points of a heroic life, is based on the experience of the real Hunter “Patch” Adams, M.D. This man, whose joy and lust for life caused him to rail against the stultified, repressed, constipated “business” of medicine that he faced as a student (yes, Dr. Kadar, he actually was branded with the label “excessively happy” by an official in an attempt to expel him from med school) and continues to struggle against in a life committed to healing, is inspiring a revolution. The absence of the kind of compassionate understanding Dr. Kadar claims to have been taught is not only what motivated Patch, but is also that which is striking chords in the millions who have flocked to the theaters to laugh, cry, cheer and applaud as Robin Williams’ Patch leads with his heart (and a rubber nose).

No one associated with the picture, least of all Dr. Patch Adams, intends to suggest that dedicated medical professionals are thoughtless, unfeeling cretins. What is wrong, believes Dr. Adams, is the greed that has corrupted the original intention; the mechanization and depersonalization that have resulted in a medical care delivery system with a technological capability second to none yet which has sold its soul to the “ideals” of business for profit and bottom-line-first (and everybody-else-get-in-line). As a retired physician told us recently, “We killed the goose that lays the golden eggs. We got greedy.”

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Unlike Dr. Kadar, millions of delighted viewers have been able to see beyond the composite characters and into the heart of “Patch Adams,” the film. And surprise, what they find there is a heart! There they learn, as one child said recently on leaving the theater, “See, Mommy, some doctors do care.” How right she is, is shown by the 2,000-plus-and-growing list of medical professionals offering to come work for Patch once the Gesundheit Institute, the free hospital that is his dream, opens its doors. (For information, call [877] SILLYDR.)

To those who believe in medicine as a service to humanity available to all, we doff our hats. To those lucky enough to study at the type of school Dr. Kadar describes, we express our hope that they will join the struggle to provide care to the millions of Americans without health insurance (6 million of them children) and those lost in the dark corridors of HMOs that allow a physician 7.8 minutes with each patient.

As for Dr. Kadar, we suggest vigorous application of a vitamin E lotion that might thicken his skin just the teeniest bit.

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