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Sidney Zion, Writer Who Crusaded to Reduce Doctors' Hours, Dies at 75 

Sidney Zion, a journalist and author who turned his daughter's death at New York Hospital in 1984 into a crusade that led to national reforms in the training, workload and supervision of young doctors, died on Sunday afternoon at Calvary Hospital in Brooklyn. He was 75 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was bladder cancer, said his son Adam Zion.

A confidant of writers and power brokers in New York, Mr. Zion was a federal prosecutor and criminal lawyer early in a many-sided career that included jobs as a legal reporter for The New York Times and columnist for The Daily News and The New York Post. He helped found a magazine and wrote a novel, a book on gangsters, a volume of essays and a biography of the lawyer Roy Cohn.

Rumpled and Runyonesque, a habitué of Gallagher's, Elaine's, Sardi's and other celebrity watering holes, Mr. Zion was a loud, cigar-smoking, storytelling die-hard New York Giants fan who railed against what he called fitness fascists, passionately defended Israel and counted horse-players, mobsters, actors and politicians among his friends.

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