He then moved to the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, where he was an education reporter, art critic and book reviewer.
[4][5] Zaritsky worked at the fifth estate until 1985, producing and directing the documentaries The Loser's Game, Charity Begins at Home, Caring for Crisler, Just Another Missing Kid, Bjorn Borg, and I'll Get There Somehow.
[8] Their third documentary, produced with Robert M. Cooper, was 1986's Rapists: Can They Be Stopped?,[9] a film about possible treatments for sex offenders which won the 1987 CableACE Award for Best Informational Special.
Also in 1987, for the CBC, Zaritsky began work on his trilogy about birth defects caused by the anti-morning sickness drug Thalidomide.
They would stay with Frontline for ten years, producing My Husband is Going to Kill Me,[14] AIDS Quarterly: Born in Africa, My Doctor, My Lover,[15] Choosing Death (aka An Appointment With Death),[16] Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo, Murder on Abortion Row,[17] and Little Criminals.
According to the Associated Press, "The documentary ... has been shown on Canadian and Swiss TV and at numerous film festivals, where it provoked little controversy.
But it struck a raw nerve in Britain, where the divisive debate over assisted suicide remains unresolved.
They divorced and, after spending the 1995–96 year as an Artist-in-Residence at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Zaritsky moved to Vancouver.
2010's Leave Them Laughing: A Musical Comedy About Dying follows singer and comedian Carla Zilber-Smith after she is diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease.
Members of each featured family underwent predictive testing to learn whether or not they have inherited the gene that causes the disease.