Jottings - Slice of life - 425 ( Coma - the movie, and a few thoughts on the moral dilemma of medicine, doctors, and hospitals) One of my haunting cinematic memories is that of a large secure hall suffused with mellowed chromatic light, containing dozens of pale naked bodies of men and women suspended in mid-air on translucent pipes feeding oxygen, and a control panel adjacent to the bodies designed to regulate the homeostatic condition — flipping the blood flow this way or that, or increasing or decreasing the oxygenation levels — to keep the organism barely alive, and nothing more. This scene is from the movie Coma, released in 1978, and it is based on a wonderful 1977 book by Robin cook — a medical doctor turned novelist. I remember watching this movie in Coimbatore with family. We were warned that it is a disturbing film, and it definitely was. For several nights, the image of those floating bodies terrorized my dreams as a horror film would, but, little did I realize the tr