You can’t just have screeching tires
October 14, 2022 8:19 PM Subscribe
How Quincy M.E. Changed Medical History For decades, Americans suffering from ‘orphan diseases’ struggled to get their voice heard. Then Pete and Jack Klugman used TV to make the world listen. - Medium article by John Bull, ht to altamira16 who recommended it to me.
By Metafilter's own garius! (whose twitter has a link to many of his best history threads).
posted by Superilla at 8:53 PM on October 14, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Superilla at 8:53 PM on October 14, 2022 [6 favorites]
but they didn't stop that violence oriented punk rock
posted by philip-random at 9:34 PM on October 14, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by philip-random at 9:34 PM on October 14, 2022 [10 favorites]
but they didn't stop that violence oriented punk rock
We sometimes quoted Quincy yelling: "What are these kids doing to themselves?" at punk parties.
In loosely related, Quincy had an episode about caffeine faked benzedrine pills, which was kinda a real issue amongst punky youths at the time.
posted by ovvl at 10:18 PM on October 14, 2022
We sometimes quoted Quincy yelling: "What are these kids doing to themselves?" at punk parties.
In loosely related, Quincy had an episode about caffeine faked benzedrine pills, which was kinda a real issue amongst punky youths at the time.
posted by ovvl at 10:18 PM on October 14, 2022
Going to take this as an excuse to post the lyrics to the show’s theme.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:35 PM on October 14, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 10:35 PM on October 14, 2022 [12 favorites]
but they didn't stop that violence oriented punk rock
To be fair, it was a persistent issue in 1982.
posted by rhizome at 10:37 PM on October 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
To be fair, it was a persistent issue in 1982.
posted by rhizome at 10:37 PM on October 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
I am always slightly astonished that widower Quincy gets remarried toward the end of the series and both his late wife Helen (seen in flashbacks) and his second wife Emily are played by Anita Gillette. Now there is a man with a type.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:10 AM on October 15, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:10 AM on October 15, 2022 [17 favorites]
Ht = hat tip
posted by wittgenstein at 3:47 AM on October 15, 2022
posted by wittgenstein at 3:47 AM on October 15, 2022
Yeah, mother was an ICU nurse. Quincy was just regular childhood TV along with the other shows that touched on the medical. Gah, they always had this second audio channel of mom explaining/ruining things.
posted by zengargoyle at 4:29 AM on October 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by zengargoyle at 4:29 AM on October 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
Of course, Orrin Hatch and Bob Dole temporarily obstructed the Orphan Drugs Act...
Sounds pretty much on-brand for Hatch. He’s the main reason the “dietary supplement” industry goes largely unregulated, yet is allowed to pose as legitimate “medicine”.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:45 AM on October 15, 2022 [7 favorites]
Sounds pretty much on-brand for Hatch. He’s the main reason the “dietary supplement” industry goes largely unregulated, yet is allowed to pose as legitimate “medicine”.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:45 AM on October 15, 2022 [7 favorites]
I grew up with Quincy on in the background - one of my parents' friends was a pathologist and I think he got a big kick out of there being an even tangentially-related tv show about his line of work. The part in the opening where all the cops pass out after Quincy pulls the drape back from what you presume is a cadaver has stuck with me for decades!
posted by 41swans at 6:16 AM on October 15, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by 41swans at 6:16 AM on October 15, 2022 [6 favorites]
Thanks for posting, dorothyisunderwood, that was a great article.
posted by Bella Donna at 7:29 AM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Bella Donna at 7:29 AM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
I love this. So many times when celebrities speak up about anything, we hear that they shouldn't be taken seriously, should shut up and sing, etc. But there is a lot of power in a celebrity voice and it is amazing when that power is used to good effect.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:36 AM on October 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 7:36 AM on October 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Just to add, garius also did a thread the other day on Klugman, Peter Falk and Angela Lansbury and how all three of them tried to help other people.
posted by scorbet at 9:08 AM on October 15, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by scorbet at 9:08 AM on October 15, 2022 [6 favorites]
I remember reading this sociology journal article in the 1990s about celebrities and social movements. To explain how celebrities affected social movements, the article introduced the concept of "standing," similar to how you need legal standing in order to file litigation without it getting thrown out of court. The author concluded that, when you introduce a celebrity into a social movement, the celebrity's efforts to show that they have "standing" to participate in the movement will end up narrowing the breadth of the critique and the political claims that the movement makes about society and the state. I find this story about Jack Klugman and Quincy interesting, precisely because it seems to completely contradict this theory about celebrity "standing" in social movements.
Jack Klugman didn't suffer from any medical ailments that could be treated by orphan drugs. So why was he so successful in changing the law about those drugs? I think the answer has less to do with Klugman's celebrity than with Klugman's position as the de facto show runner of Quincy, M.E. To put it in Marxist terms, Klugman had traded on his celebrity status to seize the means of cultural production. To be blunt, he could pretty much transmit any cultural message he damn well pleased, as long as he did it in Quincy's time slot. Quincy, M.E. was a show that long predated the Golden Age of prestige TV. As a result, Klugman didn't have to worry about disrupting character arcs or how the episodes would affect Quincy's "mythology." If Klugman wanted to get on a soapbox about something, he could easily fit it into the show's Case of the Week formula.
I think the real power move for Klugman was not the first episode about orphan drugs, but the second. The first episodes about orphan drugs got Klugman enough notice to get a hearing on Capitol Hill, but Orrin Hatch probably assumed that he could safely obstruct the orphan drugs bill after public attention waned and Quincy, M.E. moved on to other topics. What Hatch hadn't bargained for was that Klugman had complete creative control over his own series & if he wanted to air a second episode that made a fictionalized version of Orrin Hatch the show's villain for the next week, he could do so & the network didn't really care to stop Klugman because it made for good TV. I'm not sure if you could pull off the same trick today.
I think another reason why Klugman's relative lack of standing on the orphan drugs issue didn't hurt the cause is that there wasn't really much of a movement for Klugman to disrupt when it came to the orphan drugs issue. The article mentioned that many of the people affected by the issue were recluses who didn't come out in public because they were either disfigured or otherwise extremely sick. If Klugman hadn't advocated for the issue, it's possible that a public movement about orphan drugs might never have emerged at all.
posted by jonp72 at 10:09 AM on October 15, 2022 [13 favorites]
Jack Klugman didn't suffer from any medical ailments that could be treated by orphan drugs. So why was he so successful in changing the law about those drugs? I think the answer has less to do with Klugman's celebrity than with Klugman's position as the de facto show runner of Quincy, M.E. To put it in Marxist terms, Klugman had traded on his celebrity status to seize the means of cultural production. To be blunt, he could pretty much transmit any cultural message he damn well pleased, as long as he did it in Quincy's time slot. Quincy, M.E. was a show that long predated the Golden Age of prestige TV. As a result, Klugman didn't have to worry about disrupting character arcs or how the episodes would affect Quincy's "mythology." If Klugman wanted to get on a soapbox about something, he could easily fit it into the show's Case of the Week formula.
I think the real power move for Klugman was not the first episode about orphan drugs, but the second. The first episodes about orphan drugs got Klugman enough notice to get a hearing on Capitol Hill, but Orrin Hatch probably assumed that he could safely obstruct the orphan drugs bill after public attention waned and Quincy, M.E. moved on to other topics. What Hatch hadn't bargained for was that Klugman had complete creative control over his own series & if he wanted to air a second episode that made a fictionalized version of Orrin Hatch the show's villain for the next week, he could do so & the network didn't really care to stop Klugman because it made for good TV. I'm not sure if you could pull off the same trick today.
I think another reason why Klugman's relative lack of standing on the orphan drugs issue didn't hurt the cause is that there wasn't really much of a movement for Klugman to disrupt when it came to the orphan drugs issue. The article mentioned that many of the people affected by the issue were recluses who didn't come out in public because they were either disfigured or otherwise extremely sick. If Klugman hadn't advocated for the issue, it's possible that a public movement about orphan drugs might never have emerged at all.
posted by jonp72 at 10:09 AM on October 15, 2022 [13 favorites]
Well if we're posting music, my only previous knowledge of the show Quincy came from the Arrogant Worms song.
Thanks for posting. This was very interesting.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:09 AM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Thanks for posting. This was very interesting.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:09 AM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
My mother, who suffered a lifetime of chronic illnesses that were only diagnosed later in life, was a huge fan of the show. I remember her saying to me, when I was way too young to contemplate the eventuality of my mother dying, “When I die, I want somebody like Quincy to prove I wasn’t making up how sick I was.”
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:33 AM on October 15, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:33 AM on October 15, 2022 [14 favorites]
The part in the opening where all the cops pass out after Quincy pulls the drape back from what you presume is a cadaver has stuck with me for decades!
Me too, but possibly for different reasons--I was about six years old when Quincy premiered, and I didn't really have a concept yet of being so shocked/nauseated you passed out. Those cops scared the hell out of me. "OH MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THEM?"
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:47 AM on October 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
Me too, but possibly for different reasons--I was about six years old when Quincy premiered, and I didn't really have a concept yet of being so shocked/nauseated you passed out. Those cops scared the hell out of me. "OH MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THEM?"
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:47 AM on October 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
They showed us this laboratory safety film (not great quality unfortunately, from an 8mm original) one of the years when I was working a summer job as an undergrad chemistry researcher (early '80s). About 13 minutes total, skip to about 1:20 to where Klugman shows up and narrates the rest of the film. Of course we couldn't resist making our snarky little comments about "Quincy, Chemical Examiner" and Jack's trademark intensity, and it's certainly a bit of a period piece, but the basic principles we still use today regarding proper chemical storage and handling, protective clothing and equipment, and best practices for incident avoidance were pretty much all there. And Klugman's own then-current star status certainly drew more eyes to the presentation, more so than just a dry listing of dos and don'ts.
posted by hangashore at 1:13 PM on October 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by hangashore at 1:13 PM on October 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
after Quincy pulls the drape back from what you presume is a cadaver has stuck with me for decades
The scene is taken from the pilot, it's definitely supposed to be a cadaver. IIRC Quincy has to be somewhere in fairly short time so purposefully carries out the autopsy in a way most likely to get a reaction.
posted by biffa at 5:21 PM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
The scene is taken from the pilot, it's definitely supposed to be a cadaver. IIRC Quincy has to be somewhere in fairly short time so purposefully carries out the autopsy in a way most likely to get a reaction.
posted by biffa at 5:21 PM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
That was not at all what I was expecting. It was so much better! Thank you dorothyisunderwood for such a fascinating story! Best of the web, indeed!
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 7:26 AM on October 16, 2022
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 7:26 AM on October 16, 2022
Thanks so much for posting this article, super fascinating! I’m the mom of a kid who is alive and thriving due to the Orphan Drug Act, but I knew little about its history.
Some additional context: Did you know that state public health departments test newborns for rare medical conditions via newborn screening blood tests? And the list of conditions screened for varies by state? Whether or not the medical condition makes the list depends a lot on whether or not there is an effective treatment. And whether or not there’s an effective treatment often depends on if an orphan drug exists for that medical condition. So a baby born in one state may be identified via newborn screening and saved before irreparable brain damage or death occurs, but a baby born in another state may not be tested and might die of the exact same medical condition.
And did you know that if your baby is born on a weekend or holiday, or if your hospital otherwise delays sending in the blood test to the state public health laboratory, the newborn screening results may be delayed a couple days, and your baby might die? This phenomenal series of articles in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the US newborn screening program came out in the months after my kid’s diagnosis, and it has haunted me ever since. And while that series was published in 2013, newborn screening delays are still a problem. My kid’s newborn screening had to travel literally one block from the hospital to the state public health laboratory, but his results were delayed due to Christmas. And while my baby did not need immediate hospitalization, we were not able to start treatment until after New Year’s Day because the genetics clinic was closed for the weekend and holiday.
Science is amazing, but processes are imperfect. Anyway, now I know who to be grateful for that my kid’s medications exist (even though I am eternally full of rage that it has a price tag of over $740,000/year for a pediatric dosage).
posted by Maarika at 11:31 AM on October 16, 2022 [7 favorites]
Some additional context: Did you know that state public health departments test newborns for rare medical conditions via newborn screening blood tests? And the list of conditions screened for varies by state? Whether or not the medical condition makes the list depends a lot on whether or not there is an effective treatment. And whether or not there’s an effective treatment often depends on if an orphan drug exists for that medical condition. So a baby born in one state may be identified via newborn screening and saved before irreparable brain damage or death occurs, but a baby born in another state may not be tested and might die of the exact same medical condition.
And did you know that if your baby is born on a weekend or holiday, or if your hospital otherwise delays sending in the blood test to the state public health laboratory, the newborn screening results may be delayed a couple days, and your baby might die? This phenomenal series of articles in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the US newborn screening program came out in the months after my kid’s diagnosis, and it has haunted me ever since. And while that series was published in 2013, newborn screening delays are still a problem. My kid’s newborn screening had to travel literally one block from the hospital to the state public health laboratory, but his results were delayed due to Christmas. And while my baby did not need immediate hospitalization, we were not able to start treatment until after New Year’s Day because the genetics clinic was closed for the weekend and holiday.
Science is amazing, but processes are imperfect. Anyway, now I know who to be grateful for that my kid’s medications exist (even though I am eternally full of rage that it has a price tag of over $740,000/year for a pediatric dosage).
posted by Maarika at 11:31 AM on October 16, 2022 [7 favorites]
I am old enough to have intersected with some Quincy reruns in my early life but this work falls into that weird part of the venn diagram where I mostly know how to interpret its cultural significance through Mad Magazine spoofs (see also, offhand: Raging Bull, Some Kind Of Hero, Towering Inferno)
posted by hearthpig at 5:43 PM on October 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by hearthpig at 5:43 PM on October 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
The young folks have been really getting into Columbo lately; I've been wondering if Quincy might be the next thing they discover.
Another childhood memory! (We must have been watching reruns, giving the timing.) I remember asking my mother why so many pretty young women would go out with a man Quincy's age. (Bear in mind that as a small kid, anybody with gray hair read as "old" to me.) She said, "Better an old man's honey than a young man's fool."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:42 PM on October 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
Another childhood memory! (We must have been watching reruns, giving the timing.) I remember asking my mother why so many pretty young women would go out with a man Quincy's age. (Bear in mind that as a small kid, anybody with gray hair read as "old" to me.) She said, "Better an old man's honey than a young man's fool."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:42 PM on October 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
I always like Jack Klugman. This gives me even more reason to like him.
posted by drstrangelove at 5:51 AM on October 17, 2022
posted by drstrangelove at 5:51 AM on October 17, 2022
but they didn't stop that violence oriented punk rock yt
Which Spoon immortalized into a song title, but I have never watched to see if the lyrics align to the show.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:53 AM on October 17, 2022
Which Spoon immortalized into a song title, but I have never watched to see if the lyrics align to the show.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:53 AM on October 17, 2022
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posted by Larry David Syndrome at 8:50 PM on October 14, 2022 [6 favorites]