The Spirit Catches You and You Fall by Anne Fadiman is about cross-cultural ethics in medicine. The book is about a little Hmong child named Lia Lee, who suffered from epilepsy. Epilepsy is called quag dab peg1 in Hmong culture, which means the spirit catches you and you fall. In Hmong culture, this condition is a sign of distinction and divinity, as most Hmong epileptics become shamans, or as the Hmong call them, txiv neeb2. These shamans are special people imbued with healing spirits and are reserved for those with high morale. So for Lia's parents, Foua Yang and Nao Kao Lee, illness was both a gift and a curse. The main question in this case was whether Lia would have survived if her parents and doctors overcame communication problems, cultural racism and Western medicine. Perhaps the biggest problem encountered throughout this story was communication issues. Merced Community Medical Center or MCMC for short was where Lia was treated. This hospital was the only hospital in Merced County and unlike most rural county hospitals, it is state of the art, "..42,000 square foot wing...which houses coronary care units, intensive care and transitional care; 154 medical and surgical units...."3 It was a teaching hospital staffed mainly by interns, but also by some great doctors like Peggy Philp and Neil Ernst. Peggy and Neil are married and have children. They graduated together, top of their class, and created an entire practice for themselves. Although MCMC is an excellent rural hospital, it also has the same problems as most rural hospitals, namely the health care crisis, where most of the money goes to urban hospitals and then the remaining money is distributed between the... middle of paper ......es, and the Hmong would be more likely to listen to them, because they had helped someone else in their community. In conclusion, three things could have resolved the cross-cultural issues among the Hmong. and American doctors. Doctors should have shown more compassion towards the Hmong people, who have been discriminated against and demeaned for many years. They should have been more understanding of the Hmong belief and worked with it without undermining it. Finally, compromising on all aspects of a relationship, regardless of the type, is a two-way street, and if one party does not respect the other, the feeling will be mutual. You have to find a happy medium, otherwise everything will fall apart like in Lia's case.Endnotes1. Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall, (New York, Farrar 1997)2. Ibid3. Ibid4. Ibid.