September 2012
Women Still Missing from Medicine’s Top Ranks
While women make up about half of all medical students and a third of academic faculty members, they are are still vastly underrepresented in leadership roles. Is it that the medical world remains biased against women? Or is it that the culture of the workplace — built around the needs of men for generations — simply remains that way? More
Mensches with MDs
All religions have weighed in on the thorny ethical controversy of when life begins. In the Jewish faith, however, there is consensus: the embryo is only viable once it graduates medical school. More
Mansion of Happiness
What do Milton Bradley’s Game of Life, breast pumps, Stuart Little, Karen Ann Quinlan and eugenics have in common? In Jill Lepore’s engaging new book, “The Mansion of Happiness,” they are the touchstones along the existential footpath of life. “A History of Life and Death” – as the subtitle has it – could easily be a plodding, exhaustive disquisition; Lepore is a professor of history, after all. But her alter ego is as a New Yorker staff writer, and so she develops each chapter with an essayistic contour, diving in at an unexpected angle and then weaving a narrative that may perambulate historically, geographically and contextually. Yet we always come out at the other end with a thoughtful sense of how our society has grappled with these foundational concepts. More
Imagine a World Without AIDS
The beginning of the end of AIDS? Could it really be?For those of us who did our medical training in the late ’80s and early ’90s, AIDS saturated our lives. The whole era had a medieval feel, with visceral suffering and human decimation all around. More
Falling into the Diagnostic Trap
It’s as though our brains close ranks around our first impression, then refuse to consider anything else. With this patient, we almost missed a life-threatening diagnosis. More
