09/23/04

LC040923

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

With the county healthcare system already stretched to the
limits, is this any time to close a trauma center?

Janice Hahn>> People will die. People will die if this trauma
center is closed and I say today that the County Board of
Supervisors has lost their perspective.

Val>> And then, the mobster and the moviemaker. A guerilla
fighter hits the road and a mother remembers the son she never
had. A triple feature on FilmWeek.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> King-Drew Medical Center was established after the 1965
riots. The idea was to give much-needed medical care to a poor
community. Unfortunately, over the last few years, King-Drew
has been rocked by scandals, patient deaths, malpractice and
inadequate supervision. The situation is so bad that King-Drew
is in danger of losing its accreditation. Toni Guinyard went to
the Willowbrook-Watts area where county supervisors have been
working intensely to keep King-Drew Medical Center open.

Pat Hewitt>> The hospital is so important to me. I love the
patients. I love the community.

Toni Guinyard>> In the community of Willowbrook just south of
Watts, Martin Luther King-Drew Medical Center serves some of the
poorest of the poor in Los Angeles County. To the people it
serves, the hospital is more than just a hospital. It's so
often emphasized that it was born from the ashes of the 1965
riots. It has become a safe haven in times of trouble.

Pat Hewitt>> This is a battleground. There is a lot going on
in this community and, when you come into this hospital with
bullet holes the size of fists, how are we to save everybody?
But we've saved most and we've saved more than many other
communities could even dare to do.

Toni Guinyard>> Despite the accolades given to King-Drew, this
is a hospital in need of help. It's being forced to face the
possible loss of accreditation and federal funding.
Approximately 47,000 patients are treated in the King-Drew
emergency room each year and more than two thousand patients are
treated in the trauma unit. That unit is targeted for closure.

Dr. Thomas Garthwaite>> My purpose in recommending closure of
the trauma center has nothing to do with taking that care away.
It has everything to do with rescuing and saving King-Drew
Medical Center.

Toni Guinyard>> While Dr. Thomas Garthwaite views the
recommendation as a move to save the hospital, others see it as
an attempt to kill the facility. Garthwaite is the Director and
Chief Medical Officer for the Los Angeles County Department of
Health Services.

Dr. Thomas Garthwaite>> We're still going to have an emergency
room. We'll still have fifty thousand emergency room visits.
We'll still have critically ill patients. But to continue to
just add that extra 1,800 trauma victims when we know we can get
them to other safe harbors, to other safe trauma centers, just
doesn't make sense until we can stabilize and turn around this
hospital.

Rep. Maxine Waters>> Mr. Garthwaite is in charge of those
services and he's the one who selected the personnel to come in
and manage that hospital, so he has made these decisions. He is
the one that's responsible for the success or the lack of
success of that hospital, so I am calling for his firing. He
has failed. It is time for him to go.

Toni Guinyard>> Congresswoman Maxine Waters is just one of many
elected officials rushing to the aid of King-Drew Medical Center
defending the hospital while acknowledging the problems.

Rep. Maxine Waters>> I've never said that the problem that were
discovered were not real. I've never fought firing anybody.
I've never fought bringing in new management. I've never
resisted change in order to save the hospital and I stand very
firmly on my position that, do what you have to do, just don't
do away with the neonatal unit. That's why I staked my claim.
I never thought they would come back and do away with trauma
because everybody knows that Martin Luther King is well-known
for its ability to save lives.

Toni Guinyard>> Before a very vocal, very angry, crowd, the
recommendation to close the trauma center was put before a vote
by the Los Angeles County Supervisors. Don Knabe was not
present. Yvonne Brathwaite-Burke cast the lone vote against the
proposal. King-Drew Medical Center is in the district she
represents, a district other elected officials were drawn to in
the days leading up to the decision --

Rep. Diane Watson>> "We own this community. We will not let
the trauma center be moved."

Toni Guinyard>> -- to denounce the proposed trauma center
closure.

Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald>> "We're going to recognize
that there are problems, serious problems. Radical change is
needed. Systemic change is needed, but you are not going to put
a date on it when you did not put a date on those who were
vested to have and to be in charge of this hospital."

Toni Guinyard>> A hospital plagued by past medical mistakes
resulting in patient deaths eventually leading to changes in
management and fears about the hospital's future.

Bobby White>> I was stabbed numerous times and I had my lungs
punctured and I came through to this trauma center and the
trauma center, I mean, really fixed me up amazingly. They're
good and I believe that this community needs them.

Rep. Maxine Waters>> We're not proud of the fact that we have
shootings and stabbings and accidents, but the fact of the
matter is that this community does.

Toni Guinyard>> Despite arguments to the contrary, many people
in this community believe the potential closure of the trauma
center puts them one step closer to the overall closure of King-
Drew Medical Center and that, they say, is not acceptable.

Maxwell Russell>> This is the way I see it. This is the thing.
They don't want black people to be in control of nothing,
nothing.

Toni Guinyard>> After years of relative inattention, suddenly
King-Drew Medical Center is in the spotlight, the backdrop for
rallies, press conferences and protests.

Janice Hahn>> "People will die. People will die if this trauma
center is closed and I say today that the County Board of
Supervisors has lost their perspective."

Rep. Diane Watson>> "If we let it go, we are all guilty and the
blood of those who die will be on our hands."

James Hahn>> "And don't think, if you live in some other part
of Los Angeles County, this doesn't effect you because we have
what we call a trauma center network in the county. If one
piece of that network is removed, it puts a burden on all the
other parts of this network."

Toni Guinyard>> It is a network already strained to the
breaking point.

Dr. Thomas Garthwaite>> The overall Los Angeles County
emergency room and trauma system remains very over-stretched
and, I think, unstable.

Toni Guinyard>> Since 1983, eleven hospitals in Los Angeles
County have closed their trauma units. A total of thirteen
remain. It costs an average of $250,000 to treat each trauma
patient and one-third of those patients are uninsured.

Dr. Thomas Garthwaite>> The greatest degree of non-insurance in
the United States is in California. The greatest degree in
California is here in Los Angeles County.

Toni Guinyard>> And here in Los Angeles County, what becomes of
the trauma unit at King-Drew Medical Center is part of a much
broader issue.

Keith Richman>> "I care about the entire Los Angeles County
healthcare system and I am very concerned that we are all
watching the meltdown of the Los Angeles County healthcare
system not just here at King-Drew, but throughout the system."

Jackie Goldberg>> "The implications of closing a trauma center
and sending upwards of sixteen trauma cases a day to other
hospitals overloads those hospitals, which reduces the ability
to have trauma care for anybody anywhere south of the Santa
Monica Freeway."

Toni Guinyard>> The tentative decision to close the trauma
center will undoubtedly have an impact on an already strained
medical care system. Many clinics have already been closed in
order to address a $709 million dollar budget shortfall.

Dr. Thomas Garthwaite>> And I know that, in an idealized
healthcare system, we'd be opening health clinics and we'd make
it easier for people to get care, but we didn't have that
choice.

Toni Guinyard>> Dr. Garthwaite says that closing the King-Drew
trauma center is the best option for saving the hospital even if
it will result in increasing the time it will take to transport
trauma victims and increase patient load to other trauma
centers. But how great the impact is predicted to be is
anyone's guess.

Pat Hewitt>> I've walked through the emergency room and I've
seen people bleeding and dying and I've seen people being saved.
That won't be happening anymore if they close it.

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Val>> I'm here at the Computer Science Department at UCLA
where, thirty-five years ago, history was made. What kind of
history? Well, this is where the very first message was sent
between two computers. In other words, it's the birthplace of
the internet and it has changed our culture forever. And the
father of the internet is Professor Leonard Kleinrock, although
he's the first to admit that the internet was produced by a
whole group of ingenious parents, engineers, programmers and
technicians who each made key contributions. Kleinrock's
specialty was mathematics. Even as early as 1961 in papers and
books, he developed the mathematical model that computer
networks are built on. I met Leonard Kleinrock at his office at
UCLA.

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> My role started way before there was
an internet. It started when I was a graduate student at MIT and
I realized that I was surrounded by computers and I realized
that one day they're going to have to talk to each other. This
was virgin territory. I wanted to do my research in an area
which would be important and have impact, so I decided to
develop a theory by which computer networks could be evolved and
developed.

Val>> Kleinrock showed me the actual computer that sent the
very first internet message to another computer. It's called
IMP, or Interface Message Processor, and he remembers the events
leading up to that moment vividly. This could end up in the
Smithsonian one day, yes?

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> The Smithsonian didn't want it in
1989 when I offered it to them. In 1999, they wanted it and I
said no because they wouldn't guarantee to keep it on display
and I didn't want it back in the storage room. This, Val, is
the first router on the internet. We called it a packet switch
at the time. In fact, its official name was an Interface
Message Processor.

Val>> Or IMP.

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> IMP, and it was an imp. It's
basically a large mini-computer. It did the initial switching
in our packet network and it had a bank of lights here which
told us what was going on inside. We could set registers and
test them. If you look inside this lovely piece of modern
equipment, behold archaic but very effective technology. Much
of this was just the modems which connected to the high-speed
lines. High speed at that time was fifty thousand bytes per
second, fifty kilobytes per second.

Val>> What is it now?

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> Now? It's billions of bytes per
second and more. You have fifty kilobytes per second on a dial-
up modem right now (laughter). This thing was the Central
Processing Unit, the CPU, the brains of the system. It has the
fans and the cooling parts. This, in fact, is the telephone
headset to help with some of the diagnostics.

Val>> So what happened with it? What did this machine do
exactly at that crucial moment in history?

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> Well, this machine arrived here on a
Labor Day weekend in 1969 to become the first piece of
networking equipment in the internet. It came on a Labor Day
weekend, on the Tuesday following Labor Day. This machine was
connected to my time-sharing computer here at UCLA and it
basically sent messages back and forth on that September 2,
1969.

Val>> Between UCLA and --

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> -- UCLA and the UCLA time-sharing
computer right here, not anyplace else. There was no --

Val>> -- so it stayed on campus.

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> All on campus, like fifteen away, a
big gray cable. This machine was designed according to a
specification that we wrote based on the theory I had developed
almost a decade before. A month later, one of these machines, a
second one, was delivered up at Stanford Research Institute four
hundred miles up north. They connected it later that month to
their host computer and, on October 29, 1969 at 10:30 in the
evening, the first message ever on the internet was sent from
our time-shared machine to their time-shared machine.

Val>> And the question is, what was that message?

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> Funny you should ask. I say funny
because most people not only don't know what the message was,
they don't think to ask that question. The message was the
following. All we wanted to do was log on from our computer to
their computer. To do that, we had to type L-O-G and the other
machine, the SLI host, would type the I-N. Fine. So we got my
programmer with his telephone talking with the programmer at the
other end. He typed the L and said, "Did you get the L?" He
got the L. He typed the O. "Did you get the O?" He got the O.
He typed the G. "Did you get the G?" Crash. The SLI host went
down.

So in answer to your question, Val, the first message ever on
the internet was "L-O", as in lo and behold. What more
prophetic message, short and effective, could you ask for? But
we didn't plan it that way, we didn't plan it that way. We
weren't smart enough the way Morse and Bell and Armstrong were
to have the press there and a good message like "What hath God
wrought?"

Val>> (Laughter) And if you had a particular message now in
hindsight, what would it be?

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> That's an interesting question.

Val>> You have some time to think.

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> Well, I haven't thought about that,
but it would probably be something like "What can the system
really do to change society?" It took us some fifteen, twenty,
twenty-five years to see that happen and it has changed more
than society. It's changed education, the way we work, the way
we play, the way we do research --

Val>> -- the way we think.

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> The way we think. I mean, kids these
days, these people don't ask -- the question is, the network has
been around for thirty-five years. This is the thirty-fifth
anniversary of that first message coming up. They think it was
here to begin with. The younger you are, the more adept you
are. The five year olds are teaching the seven year olds how to
use the internet and its applications.

Val>> And you said it's in the -- well, put it this way. If
you were to give an age to the internet, where is it? It's been
thirty-five years, but it's still, what, embryonic, infancy,
teenage, early adult?

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> I would say that it's in its stone
age. You ain't seen nothing yet. I mean, ways in which this
network is being used are just beginning to get exciting. The
communities that are being formed, the applications, I mean, the
Web. Look at what a dramatic impact the Web has. The Web was
just a wonderfully simple interface for people to gain access to
information and each other. Well, what's coming next?

They're talking about the Symantec Web where now the network
understands what the information is all about. And beyond that,
will the network ever make really important decisions for us?
Well, it already does. Your electronic funds transfer system is
out of your hands. Banking is out of our hands. Air traffic
control, reservations. There's so much we've given up already.
You know, you can't go back. We let the genie out of the bag
when that first message was sent. It's not going back.

Val>> And this is the bag.

Prof. Leonard Kleinrock>> This is the bag (laughter).

Val>> On October 29, UCLA is celebrating the thirty-fifth
anniversary of the internet by holding a symposium. It's open
to the public and you can get more information at their website
at internetuniversity.com.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm
Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film is the psychological
thriller "The Forgotten" starring Julianne Moore, Dominic West
and Gary Sinise.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> We're joined this week by critics Lael
Lowenstein of Variety and Jean Oppenheimer of New Times. Were
you psychologically thrilled by "The Forgotten", Lael?

Lael Lowenstein>> Not thrilled, but definitely scared. It's a
story of a grieving mother, Julianne Moore, who's told that the
son that she lost in a plane crash fourteen months ago never
existed and all of a sudden her psychiatrist, Gary Sinise, is
telling her that it's her husband, Anthony Edwards. So she's
basically confronted with the fact that people think she's
delusional. She knows she's not and she's got to set about
proving that she really had a son. She's joined by Dominic West
who has lost his daughter in this accident and together they
fight what may be aliens or maybe the government. We don't
really know. The film never really resolved that conflict to my
satisfaction.

There are a lot of cheap thrills in it. To me, it was the worst
kind of gimmickry. It was as if the folks in the CGI House just
decided we thought this was one really cool special effect and
we're going to make the whole movie around it. It was really
scary, but not smart. I felt it purported to be about something
intelligent and profound, which is the nature of memory and
forgetting and why we remember and why we forget, but it really
wasn't that at all. It was just a fright game for me.

Larry Mantle>> So a premise of interest, it couldn't deliver
the goods for you. Jean, what did you think?

Jean Oppenheimer>> I agree completely. Cheap thrills is a good
way to describe it because, if you want a movie where you're
going to jump out of your seat being scared with something
unexpected happening, then this will be a film that satisfies
you. But the film raises questions just within the story itself
that it never answers, so it makes it very unsatisfying and
really pointless in a way because you think maybe it's going to
say something.

If you want a film that's sort of psychologically interesting or
probing or intellectually so, this really isn't the film for
you. My feeling about Julianne Moore is that perhaps she's
trying to move over from the Indy film world to the more
mainstream and this just may be an attempt to do so.

Larry Mantle>> Although, with this cast, you could argue that
it's clearly trying to play to an intelligent audience, but not
doing it.

Jean Oppenheimer>> Yes, they'll be disappointed.

Larry Mantle>> Next up is a comedy set in Hollywood involving
the FBI trying to make a movie it never intends to make as all
part of a sting operation to nab the mob. Starring are Matthew
Broderick and Alec Baldwin in "The Last Shot".

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> So, Jean, were you laughing at "The Last Shot"?

Jean Oppenheimer>> A few times. I mean, this is a movie that
the premise is so far-fetched and yet it fits in so perfectly
with sort of society's image of Hollywood that you think it's
plausible and, in fact, it's based on a true story. There were
a few cute bits particularly when the Matthew Broderick
character is so desperate to get his film made. The film is
called "Arizona". It's set in the Arizona desert, but he is
willing to shoot it in New England and Providence because that's
where the FBI agent has to be. So there were a few cute ideas
like that, but most of the humor I thought was really quite
lame. The performances, however, ingratiated it. I think Alec
Baldwin did a nice job and the eternally youthful looking
Matthew Broderick brings that likeability quotient that he has
so much.

Larry Mantle>> He plays earnest so beautifully.

Jean Oppenheimer>> Yes, yes.

Larry Mantle>> What did you think, Lael?

Lael Lowenstein>> I agree. I think maybe I liked it a little
more than Jean did. I felt it was a comedy as notable for the
absurdity of its premise as for its remarkable cast. I mean,
you've got Calista Flockhart, Tony Shalhoub, Ray Liotta, Alec
Baldwin, Matthew Broderick, Toni Collette as well. A great,
great cast doing what they do best and it was very entertaining.
A great sort of commentary on Hollywood and a nice addition to
the movies about moviemaking. And the fact that it was based on
a true story is just absolutely incredible.

Larry Mantle>> So you actually liked it better than Jean?

Lael Lowenstein>> I did. I thought it was very funny. It's
light, capricious, nice and short, about ninety minutes. You
know, a real kind of spirited romp.

Larry Mantle>> Our third film is based on the true story of
young Che Guevara, medical student, who becomes politically
aware after taking a lengthy motorcycle trip through South
America. The movie is titled "The Motorcycle Diaries".

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Well, Jean, was this a trip you enjoyed taking?

Jean Oppenheimer>> It was. I'm a great admirer of Walter
Salles's films. He did "Central Station" and my personal
favorite, "Behind the Sun". I feel that, after seeing one of
his films, I always feel sort of purified. He just has --
although he does show characters who have greedy selfish
instincts, he really focuses on characters who have an innate
what we would like to think of, I think, as universal goodness
and decency. I think of his films as a window into the best
part of a person's soul and I felt this film was that way.

Very little happens in this film. You know, it's a road movie.
Basically, the characters, particularly Ernesto, who becomes Che
Guevara after the movie is over, experiences an inner journey
and it's very interior. I mean, it's not as though you're
seeing it. In a sense, you're not even feeling it. But you
sense that he's going through this. He's a quiet, sensitive
guy. He doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve at all. Some
viewers, I think, may feel that they don't connect perhaps
emotionally with him quite as much as they would have
anticipated. Whereas, the other character, a wonderful
performance from Rodrigo de la Serna, is a much more sort of
confectiously outgoing guy and easier to grasp. You know, I
think some people may find this film a little earnest. I found
it eloquent.

Larry Mantle>> Lael, did you like "The Motorcycle Diaries"?

Lael Lowenstein>> I did. You know, I agree with pretty much
everything Jean just said. I think the handicap for me was that
the film did feel a little more like a travelogue than a story
as a whole, even though it's about something that's very
important, which is the awakening, the political and social
awakening, of Che Guevara. I felt that Walter Salles brings
this incredible cast and these locations together and actually
the making of the film kind of replicates the experience of the
motorcycle diaries in a way because it's this sort of
international crew and cast that came together and had this
amazing journey. I thought it was really a lovely, very moving,
very poetic film.

Larry Mantle>> Thanks for joining us for another edition of
FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC
joined by critics Jean Oppenheimer of New Times and Lael
Lowenstein of Variety. Join us again in a couple of weeks for
our next edition of FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val>> And remember that you can hear a full hour of FilmWeek
every Friday morning at 11:00 a.m. on KPCC. And that's our
program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times,
thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

It's not just animals that can be endangered. One of Los
Angeles's architectural treasures is slowly crumbling away.

>> This block is a very good example of a damaged block and
this is the kind of damage that occurs when water gets inside
the concrete, cracks it and eventually weakens the entire
structural system.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.