Dr. Lydia Kowalenko loses her job at a pharmaceutical company after she refuses to cover up the shortcomings of certain captive preparations that have already cost lives. Through connections, she soon finds herself a new position. Shortly afterwards, however, her old boss gets her back under his wing again due to a company merger. This time around, she begins to conform. Her daughter Katia, also a doctor, is unscrupulously intent on pursuing her own career from the outset. Driven by her research ambitions, she carries out an unnecessary operative intervention in the clinic on a female patient who then dies from the operation's complications. Katia's son Thomas, who also wants to become a doctor, works as an assistant in the pathology department. He witnesses how the case is covered up and how litigation by the clinic director is quickly forestalled. When Thomas has an accident, he dies in the hospital before the eyes of his relatives, who do not know whether he succumbed to his injuries or if he was a victim of an artificial blood transfusion.
—DEFA Film Library