Product Description

Product Description
This taut, compelling drama centers on a radical brain operation performed on two little girls with a horrible and disfiguring disease, dystonia musculorum deformans. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Victim is ALways the Same
Of course I love this book.The girl (janet) is really my daughter and the course of her struggle toget a diagnosis....I am surprised it is still in print, but I heard it is used as a text book for medical students...An interesting thing is that just yesterday our daughter had her 7th brain surgery, a deep brain stimulator was placed in her brain and the old stimulator taken out...She was also awake for this surgery and came out smiling! I brought this book to give to a new member of our family so that she could be informed of this disease.I have brought several copies over the years and given them to other families.
It is an easy read and a real testimony to Dr. Cooper who was the first surgeon to try this surgery on a child. He passed away many years ago, but hewas our hero because he saved our daughters life.

Reveiw of "The Victim is Always the Same"
This is a book about medical ethics, written from a viewpoint that only a medical doctor could be privy to, but with tremendous insight andcompassion for the point of view of the patient. It is a deeply thoughtfulbook; profound, and yet written with great simplicity and clarity. Thequestions it poses are addressed to the medical profession, but anyone whohas ever struggled to get adequate treatment from the medical professionwill find it equally important to read, and will experience a strong senseof affirmation and a realization that they are not alone. Moreover, thequestions are ones that the medical profession will probably never attemptto respond to, unless they are asked by a great many more people. The casestudies that Dr. Cooper uses to illustrate his point of view have to dowith a condition called muscular dystonia (dystonia musculorum deformans),because the surgical treatment of that condition was his specialty. Thebook came to my attention because of the fact that my own son suffers fromthis same condition, and I will freely admit that the book is particularlyimportant to me for that reason. But I very strongly believe that thequestions that are being asked are of much broader importance than thespecific condition. They are questions that relate not only to the medicalprofession as a whole, but to any and every field of service that hasbecome weighted down with bureaucracy. As such, the book is even moreimportant now than when it was first published nearly thirty years ago ... Read more