The Spirit Catches You and You Fall by Anne Fadiman talks about intercultural ethics in medicine. The book is about a little Hmong girl named Lia Lee, who suffered from epilepsy. Epilepsy is called quag dab peg1 in Hmong culture which translates to the spirit that catches you and you fall. In the Hmong culture this disease is a sign of distinction and divinity, because most Hmong epileptics become shamans, or as the Hmong call them, txiv neeb2. These shamans are special people imbued with healing spirits and are considered those of high moral character, 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 had overcome communication problems, cultural racism and the Western way of doing medicine. Perhaps the biggest issue faced in 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 hospitals in the county, it is state-of-the-art, “…a 42,000-square-foot wing…that houses coronary care units, intensive care and transitional care; 154 medical and surgical unit beds...."3 This was a teaching hospital staffed primarily by interns, but also by great doctors such as Peggy Philp and Neil Ernst. Peggy and Neil are married and have children. They graduated together at the top of their class and created a true practice for themselves. Although MCMC is a large rural hospital, it also has the same problems as most rural hospitals, which is the health crisis, where most of the money goes to urban hospitals and then the remaining money is distributed among… . half of the paper ......, 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 solved the cross-cultural problems between the Hmong and American doctors. Doctors should have had more compassion towards the Hmong people, who have been discriminated against and humiliated for many years. They should have been more understanding of the Hmong's belief and worked with it without undermining it. Ultimately, compromising in all aspects of a relationship, no matter what type, is a two-way street, and if one party doesn't respect the other, the feeling will be reciprocated. We need to find a middle ground otherwise everything will fall apart like in Lia's case.Final Notes1. Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Takes You and You Fall, (New York, Farrar 1997)2. Ibid3. Ibid4. Ibid