Introduction

I n june of 1979 Dr. David Rabin, director of Endocrinology at Vanderbilt Medical Center, started to have feelings of restlessness in his legs. By that autumn he was walking with a limp, and a year later he was scarcely able to walk at all. He had contracted a crippling affliction called Lou Gehrig’s disease. The disease would have been bad enough, but Dr. Rabin was further horrified by the reactions of his medical colleagues.