The Retrievals

Yahoo

5 days ago

Credit - The Retrievals is a stunning piece of investigative journalism from the Serial and New York Times team that demands your attention. Host Susan Burton lays out the story of a Yale University fertility clinic nurse who siphoned off fentanyl from patients undergoing egg-retrieval surgery, leaving them in unspeakable pain. When the women complained, they were dismissed by their doctors and the university. (The nurse eventually pleaded guilty and Yale settled with the patients who sued.) It's a horror story about the ways our health system fails women, told from the perspective of a group of victims whose desperation to have children led them to justify their own suffering, rationalizing that motherhood is inextricably tied to hardship. The interviews with the victims are emotional and delve into complex issues. Some, who happen to study addiction or medicine for a living, actually empathize with the nurse who was hooked on painkillers, while others tie their righteous indignation to larger societal problems surrounding habitual gaslighting in women's medicine. It's a disturbing but eye-opening commentary on the quest to become pregnant, a common journey we do not discuss often enough. A second harrowing season on complications with C-sections, one of the most frequently performed surgeries in the world, released in the summer of 2025.
Write to Eliana Dockterman at [e-mail].