Fadiman’s rumination on Neil’s unwillingness to compromise Lia’s treatment presents a difficult moral choice and suggests the importance of flexibility in the context medical care. It’s noteworthy that he so decisively held to his belief that it was his “job” to “practice good medicine” and that, conversely, it was the Lees’ “job to comply.” As Fadiman later makes clear, the idea of compliance in the medical world implies hierarchies of power in which the doctor is in full control while the patient plays a passive part in his or her own treatment. Although Neil was only doing what he thought…