The Washington Post has an op-ed today by Lillie Lainoff, a sophomore at Yale, on 2014’s “Hollywood obsession” with teenagers with fatal diseases.

Ms. Lainoff suffers from “an autonomic nervous system disorder called postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) that causes extreme dizziness, fatigue and other debilitating symptoms,” and her description of life with that disease is sobering.

My mom would wake me up at 7 each morning to lift my legs in the air so the blood that had pooled in my feet, a side effect of the disorder, could more easily make its way back to my heart. Instead of spending my time between classes talking to friends, I hid in the bathroom to take blood-pressure medication, upwards of 20 pills a day. As time went on, I spent less time at school and more at home, in my bed, too exhausted to move.

She contrasts her experience, and the experiences of others she has met along the way, with the absurd fictional accounts currently being churned out by Hollywood.

Her conclusion, referencing a character in a new television show:

At the end of the pilot, Charlie says: “Everyone thinks that when you go to a hospital, life stops. But it’s just the opposite. Life starts.”
After hearing those words, I wanted to cry. Life does not start when you go to a hospital. If you’re lucky enough to have a non-terminal illness, life continues, in a warped version that includes more pain and obstacles than any young person should have to experience.

You can read her entire op-ed here.

I bring this to your attention because I’ve heard from a number of folks lately who either are or have been really sick — young and old alike. They describe how appalled they are with Hollywood’s recent treatment of serious illness. (For some good examples, read Ms. Lainoff’s op-ed.) Count me among them.

Film and television — when done well — can help the sick make it through what can often be unbearable hardships, providing hope and guidance and, sometimes, even information. Alternatively, they can cheapen and trivialize the real suffering of others.

Hollywood seems to be opting for the latter.

— Michael R. Strain is a resident scholar and economist at the American Enterprise Institute. You can write to him on Twitter at twitter.com/MichaelRStrain.