Natalie S. Robins

How safe is your hospital? After his daughter's death, Sidney Zion launched a fiery campaign against New York Hospital, its doctors, and our entire medical infrastructure that centered on that question. Eventually, his efforts led to sweeping reforms in the rules governing hospitals in America and abroad, and made the name Libby Zion a buzzword for medical malpractice. Recently, viewers across the country were mesmerized by Court TV's dramatic trial coverage of the wrongful death suit Zion brought against the hospital and the doctors involved in Libby's care. But the jury's controversial verdict raised as many questions as it answered, and the proceedings failed to fully address the life-and-death issues at the heart of the case: the hidden protocols that govern the way our hospitals really operate. . Now, acclaimed investigative writer Natalie Robins delivers the inside account of this compelling modern tragedy, an object lesson in what happens when modern bureaucracies and complex family dynamics collide. Based on interviews with principals in the case, family members, friends, and hundreds of medical experts and educators, her book reveals the truth about Libby Zion's life and death and takes readers into the training grounds and hospital corridors of America's premiere medical institutions to confront the people who actually make the pivotal decisions when lives hang in the balance.

Alien Ink is the most comprehensive book yet written on how the Federal Bureau of Investigation waged war against American writers and readers from the early years of this century. As Natalie Robins reveals for the first time, this assault on freedom of expression began long before iron-fisted J. Edgar Hoover joined the Justice Department and made his name synonymous with that of the FBI for over forty years. The war carried over into the 1980s, when librarians, as part. Of a Library Awareness Program, were recruited to spy on readers. Drawing on nearly 150 files released to the author under the Freedom of Information Act, Natalie Robins's absorbing narrative offers compelling new documentary evidence about the hounding and intimidation of writers ranging from John Reed to Allen Ginsberg, from Edna St. Vincent Millay to James Baldwin, and from Walter Winchell to Robert Lowell--a virtual Who's Who of American letters. Alien Ink is the. Story of hidden agendas and hidden powers, and contains many surprises--among them, that Hoover, known for his right-wing sympathies, not only inhibited left-wing expression, but harassed right-wingers as well. Robins shows how the Bureau combed newspapers, books, plays, films, and radio broadcasts for "alien ink"--Anything "anti-American" or "anti-FBI"--and describes how those incriminated endured phone taps, mail searches, and character assassinations. She reveals the. Pressure tactics FBI agents employed to make them toe the line, as well as the astounding criminal lengths (including extortion and entrapment) that the Bureau went to in order to "get something" on those writers who wouldn't capitulate. And she explains the FBI's attitude toward the group of writers it considered the most threatening of all: journalists. Confirming Robins's findings are dozens of interviews--dramatic dialogues--with living writers and others of all. Ideological persuasions, who bear witness to the FBI's investigative crusade. They include Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, Jr., Murray Kempton, Arthur Miller, Kay Boyle, Jessica Mitford, and Howard Fast. Here, as well, are the testimonies of former and present FBI employees (including a current special agent who speaks on the condition of anonymity, and Cartha D. DeLoach, Hoover's third in command) and an interview with the controversial Roy Cohn, who spoke from his. Deathbed. Unequaled in its scope and depth, Alien Ink provides a crucial understanding of the FBI's covert war on writers and the First Amendment. It traces America's shifting cultural obsessions from the teens to the nineties, so that patterns and connections come into focus as never before. Make no mistake, the FBI tried to control opinion in America, and this provocative and penetrating work of investigative reporting tells how and why.

Today, one out of every three Americans uses some form of alternative medicine, either along with their conventional ("standard," "traditional") medications or in place of them. One of the most controversial--as well as one of the most popular--alternatives is homeopathy, a wholly Western invention brought to America from Germany in 1827, nearly forty years before the discovery that germs cause disease. Homeopathy is a therapy that uses minute doses of natural substances--minerals, such as mercury or phosphorus; various plants, mushrooms, or bark; and insect, shellfish, and other animal products, such as Oscillococcinum. These remedies mimic the symptoms of the sick person and are said to bring about relief by "entering" the body's "vital force." Many homeopaths believe that the greater the dilution, the greater the medical benefit, even though often not a single molecule of the original substance remains in the solution.In Copeland's Cure, Natalie Robins tells the fascinating story of homeopathy in this country; how it came to be accepted because of the gentleness of its approach--Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were outspoken advocates, as were Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Daniel Webster. We find out about the unusual war between alternative and conventional medicine that began in 1847, after the AMA banned homeopaths from membership even though their medical training was identical to that of doctors practicing traditional medicine. We learn how homeopaths were increasingly considered not to be "real" doctors, and how "real" doctors risked expulsion from the AMA if they even consulted with a homeopath.At the center of Copeland's Cure is Royal Samuel Copeland, the now-forgotten maverick senator from New York who served from 1923 to 1938. Copeland was a student of both conventional and homeopathic medicine, an eye surgeon who became president of the American Institute of Homeopathy, dean of the New York Homeopathic Medical College, and health commissioner of New York City from 1918 to 1923 (he instituted unique approaches to the deadly flu pandemic). We see how Copeland straddled the worlds of politics (he befriended Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, among others) and medicine (as senator, he helped get rid of medical "diploma mills"). His crowning achievement was to give homeopathy lasting legitimacy by including all its remedies in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938.Finally, the author brings the story of clashing medical beliefs into the present, and describes the role of homeopathy today and how some of its practitioners are now adhering to the strictest standards of scientific research--controlled, randomized, double-blind clinical studies.From the Hardcover edition.

Une enquête sur la surveillance assidue qu'a exercée le FBI sur les écrivains américains depuis sa fondation en 1908 jusqu'à nos jours.

xv, 399 pages, 15 unnumbered pages of plates : 24 cm