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
Assuming the Doctor’s a “He”
A classic study of preschoolers in 1979 showed that even young children “knew†that doctors were men and nurses were women. But surely we’ve moved beyond these stereotypes, no? More
Ins and Outs of Inpatient and Outpatient Medicine
The inpatient wards and the outpatient clinic are part of the same hospital, but they are like different planets. On the inpatient side, the patients are acutely ill — malignant brain tumor, acute renal failure, heart valve infections, intestinal bleeding, and so on. Not so in the outpatient clinic, where patients get their regular medical care to manage everyday chronic illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, obesity and heart disease. More
Monday
Maybe it was simply human nature that no one wanted to be sick on weekends. Or admit to it. Or do something about it. Whatever the reason, Mondays were always the days of reckoning: weekend walls of denial came crashing down, weekend indiscretions faced their due, weekend warriors paid their price in blood. Admissions poured into the hospital. It was as though the map of Brooklyn had been curled up like a cone and all the human wreckage and misery funneled down to the tip where East Memorial Municipal Hospital sat, as it had for the past century since it opened, with its doors flung widely and indiscriminately open. More
Lemons for Weight Loss
The field of weight-loss pills is strewn with lemons. Why do both doctors and patients pretend that it’s lemonade, when it’s anything but! More
Slow Medicine
I can’t tell you exactly when it happened, but sometime in the past two decades, the “practice of medicine” was insidiously morphed into the “delivery of health care.” If you aren’t sure of the difference between the two, then “God’s Hotel” is the book for you. It’s an engaging book that chronicles this fin-de-siecle phenomenon from the perspective of San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital, the last almshouse in the United States. More
Doctors Have Feelings Too
Doctors should be aware of emotions that may lead them to be less than honest with patients or reluctant to admit errors. More
Who Deserves a Heart Transplant?
One of the most agonizing spots in medicine is the “transplant list.†In the United States, as in many countries, we rely on a simple system of altruism for organ donation. But other countries are trying different approaches. More
Music Teachers for Doctors?
What if every doctor learned from a music teacher? Could a “coach” bring back the intellectual vibrancy from medical-school days for one doctor, the way a music teacher inspires constant growth? More
A Sampler of Danielle’s writing
Want to sample Danielle’s writing? Check out videos, podcasts, and of course, the written word of Danielle’s most memorable stories. More
Americans by Choice
“Enlightened citizenship is the everlasting strength of our democracy.” Inspiration from Andrew Carnegie. More
Filling the Ritalin Rx
Most physicians think little about prescriptions after they hand them off to their patients. But patients can face shame and humiliation when filling a prescription. More
