Best Movie About My Work: For This Doctor, It Was “Like Something the Lord Made”

The Washington Post asked 25  people outstanding in their profession to pick the best movie ever made about their work. In the “Doctor” category, Anthony Kalloo, chief of gastroenterology and hepatology at John Hopkins Hospital, picked “Something the Lord Made,” a 2004 made-for-television movie based on a 1989 Washingtonian article, by Katie McCabe, that won the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing.

Here’s Dr. Kalloo’s description of the movie, which starred Alan Rickman and Mos Def and won a 2004 Emmy:

Vivien Thomas was a minority and an assistant to the head of surgery at Johns Hopkins back in the 1940s. He never made it past high school; he had to enter buildings through the back door. But he was extremely good technically, and he did pioneering research on “blue baby” syndrome. “Something the Lord Made” is about his work. As a minority myself, and being at Hopkins, I appreciate his challenges of doing fundamental science. And I love the scene when the chief of surgery is struggling a little and insists that Vivien Thomas come into the surgical room to help.

Here’s the story as published in the Washingtonian.