Dr Harris' 'speech' (spoiler)

He says: "No decision is easy, Sue. It only looks that way when you're young. When you're older, everything is complicated. There is no black and white, only gray."

Then he says something like "These multi-million dollar hospital complexes are the cathedrals of our age. There are serious issues to be dealt with. Issues of life and death, the rights of the sick. Decisions have to be made. But society isn't deciding! It's leaving it to us. The experts. The doctors!"



He is basically saying that the end justifies the means. If people need organs (rich people, who can pay for them), then why should they have to wait a long time for a donor? Sounds reasonable, except that it involves murder.

It was a really dumb rationale. In my opinion, Crichton was trying to recreate the magic of Ned Beatty's capitalism sermon from "Network," the scene where Beatty explains to Howard Beale why these shady deals with the middle east are actually in the best interests of the USA and the world's monetary ecosystem in general. In Coma, the excuse that medical professionals need to make the tough ethical decisions that the herd can't decide on is lame. I'm not sure if Crichton inherited this tripe from Cook's novel, but the whole speech should've just been cut out altogether. Surely their main motivation was money, and it should've been left at that.

Kind of like Roger Ebert's "Fallacy of the Talking Killer":

The villain wants to kill the hero. He has him cornered at gunpoint. All he has to do is pull the trigger. But he always talks first. He explains the hero's mistakes to him. Jeers. Laughs. And gives the hero time to think his way out of the situation, or be rescued by his buddy. Cf. most JAMES BOND movies.

There were two points of Dr. Harris's speech; none of them were designed to sway the audience to Harris's/the hospital's point of view:

1.) It was an indictment against certain members of the medical profession. It was showing how a doctor could become so egotistical so as to commit mass murder while rationalizing it as contributing to 'the greater good.' Before Dr. Wheeler passes out she indicates that she is far from convinced saying something to the effect of "you need help;" and

2.) As purely a plot device. Dr. Wheeler might not have known that Dr. Harris was behind the whole conspiracy otherwise. Had Dr. Harris simply kept quiet and let the drug take effect, he could have called down for a routine appendectomy with no suspicion on Dr. Wheeler's part. She may have believed that she had appendicitis. Had she believed that and had no reason to suspect foul play, she would not have alerted Dr. Bellows (Michael Douglas), she would not have been saved, and Dr. Harris et. al. would have gotten away with everything. Again, this shows the massive ego Dr. Harris had. He was so sure he was going to get away with yet another intentional coma of a young, healthy person, he admitted the entire plot.

As it stands, when Dr. Harris turned off the lights on Dr. Wheeler's abdominal X-rays, he was figuratively turning out the lights on the conspiracy and his personal freedom.