Episode
Frontline: Better Off Dead?
Overview
Frontline goes inside the hospitals where every day doctors, lawyers, and parents face the agonizing choice: how far do we go with medical treatment for infants born so physically and mentally damaged that they have no hope of leading normal lives? Several intimate case histories are examined, as are the politics of recent legal decisions and government rules relating to the medical care for critically ill babies.
Details
- Series
- Frontline
- Season
- Season 2
- Episode
- Episode 21
- Air date
- 1984-11-20
Episode context
Better Off Dead? is Episode 21 in Season 2 of Frontline. It aired on 1984-11-20.
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Episode 20: The Arab and the Israeli
Two men, a Palestinian and an Israeli, born thirty miles apart, journey to America. In synagogues and universities, on television talk shows and interviews, they try to project a message: that a solution for the West Bank is possible.
Episode 22: Cry, Ethiopia, Cry
In one of the first comprehensive reports broadcast in the U.S., Frontline presents the searing reality of the famine in Ethiopia. In desert camps described as 'the closest thing to hell on earth,' nearly 100 children, old people, and the infirm were dying every day. They were dying while the US and the Soviet Union argued over how to feed them and what to do about Ethiopia.
More episodes from this season
Episode 19: Living Below the Line
It could never happen to you. One day it happened to Farrell Stallings. After 28 years at the same job, he was laid off-a victim of the recession. Now he's broke, afraid, and at the mercy of the welfare system. Frontline follows him into the maze of the bureaucracy.
Episode 23: Red Star Over Khyber
In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. On the fifth anniversary of the invasion, Frontline correspondent Richard Reeves reports from Afghanistan and Pakistan, examining the stalemate in the Persian Gulf and the pressure placed on Pakistan to accept over one million Afghan refugees.
Episode 18: Not One of the Boys
As more women are voting and running for elected office, correspondent Judy Woodruff looks at women and politics in 1984 through the eyes of accomplished women like UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro.
Episode 24: Marshall High Fights Back
Marshall High School is one of the poorest in Chicago-both academically and economically. But it is fighting back, trying desperately to upgrade academic standards and to make a difference in the lives of it students. Frontline looks at the struggle to salvage Marshall High and the lessons this school has for a nation trying to improve its public schools.
Episode 17: Welcome to America
The bittersweet story of four unforgettable people who flee repression in Poland to find a better life in Chicago. They succeed, fail, fight, love, laugh, and confront an America unlike anything they had ever imagined.
Episode 16: So You Want to Be President
Following the 1984 presidential campaign of Gary Hart to reveal presidential politics as it has never before been seen on television -- from the early days of lonely ambition, through the months of promise, to the day of denial.
Episode 15: Man's Best Friends
Examining ethical arguments over the use of animal testing in American laboratories, hospitals, and medical schools. While some animal rights groups break into labs to 'liberate' research animals, many scientists claim any significant restriction on animal testing would end medical progress.
Episode 14: Bread, Butter and Politics
Examines findings from a presidential commission and several private advocacy groups on hunger in America, and the extent to which they capture the human story as well as the political environment surrounding the issue.
Episode 13: Warning from Gangland
Explores what Los Angeles is trying to do about its gang problem. It's the worst in the nation, killing more than 1,000 people over the past three years -- the majority of whom were not even gang members.
Episode 12: Return of the Great White Fleet
Profiling Navy Secretary John Lehman and the growing debate inside the Navy establishment to build a multi-billion-dollar fleet which critics warn may not be suited to the kind of wars the nation is most likely to fight.