• Lesser Home
• 'The Art of Learning Medicine' collection
• 'An Artist in the University Medical Center' collection
• Other works of art
•     '21 Years with Cystic Fibrosis'
•     '100 to a Bottle'
•     '780 Children Have Lunch Within the Hour'
•     'Bronchoscopy'
•     'Case Discussion Before Making Rounds'
•     'The Elderly'
•     'Enzyme Replacement'
•     'Laser Procedure to Prevent Blindness'
•     'Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 3-D'
•     'MRI Film of an AIDS Patient'
•     'Nothing Will Ever Happen to Them'
•     'Not One Millimeter Off'
•     'One Out of Nine'
•     'Pediatric Nephrology Conference'
•     'Peptide Synthesization'
•     'Strategy for Radiation'
•     'Teaching Rounds at Charity'
•     'They Just Melted Away'
•     'Therapeutical Apheresis
•     'Waiting for a New Heart'
•     'World Wide Dissemination of Medical Knowledge'

'Enzyme Replacement'
(ink drawing with tempera, 21.5 x 29')
©May H. Lesser

At a public hospital in New Orleans, I drew two small boys, placid yet frightened, receiving enzyme replacement for Gaucher's Disease. The drug costs about $120,000 a year and is given to them by the pharmaceutical company who made the discovery. It is a small intimate room, the intravenous drip was going well and the nurse began to share her thoughts with me. "I just came back from Romania. I went with Catholic Charities to teach sterile nursing techniques, but when I got there, there was nothing to keep sterile ... no equipment, no food, no nurses, no diapers. It was so much worse than what was seen on television." She tried to reconcile poverty and human waste there and the modern research and its cost for the boys here. There is no answer.