I don’t get my news from TV any more, so I’m not sure what kind of extravaganzas are going on now. But, sure, the media can be very intrusive and a real nuisance when one is trying to run an ICU.

In our ICU, Hollywood actor Anthony Quinn was treated after open-heart surgery, and it was a Great Media Event. Things did not go as planned, as he had an acute post-operative psychosis, but somehow he survived.

We had a helicopter landing pad in Central Park adjacent to the hospital for emergency cases, and sometimes I would go out there to meet the patient. Periodically the media would be there to do story, and once I found myself pictured standing next to the helicopter in the centerfold of the Daily News (a tabloid)… as a “Doctor of Mercy”.

On another occasion, our chief of hematology needed emergency cardiac surgery, and the powers-that-be decided to import the great cardiac surgeon Denton Cooley from Texas to do the surgery, who of course descended like an archangel to our helicopter pad. It was another Grand Media Event, and I think that it contributed to the fact that the patient did not survive the operating room.