In 1951 a young black woman by the name of Henrietta Lacks came to Johns Hopkins with cervical cancer. Doctors took her cells, grew them in a dish, and created the famed HeLa cell line. It was HeLa cells that created the cornerstone of some of the 20th century’s greatest medical advances. One small detail: The treating physicians who took Henrietta’s cells never ... Continue Reading about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
How Doctors Think – How Patients Think
If you want to see the difference between how doctors and patients think, read Jerome Groopman’s How Doctors Think and Thomas Goetz’s The Decision Tree. The contrast is striking. How Doctors Think, while offering a comprehensive review of the cognitive missteps made by physicians, is terminally physician-centric in its analysis of the relationship we share with ... Continue Reading about How Doctors Think – How Patients Think
The Decision Tree – An Early Roadmap to the Future of Personal Health
What’s amazing is that despite the vocal movement to empower patients, no one has put together a well-referenced, readable book to help patients understand how they should use personalized medicine to influence their health. Until now. Enter The Decision Tree – Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine (Rodale 2010/affiliate link), ... Continue Reading about The Decision Tree – An Early Roadmap to the Future of Personal Health
Vaccine-Preventable Disease – The Forgotten Story
I’ve always suggested that when we publicly put a human face on the victims of vaccine-preventable disease we would begin to win the war against antivax propaganda. We’ve arrived. This month Texas Children’s Hospital published Vaccine-Preventable Disease – The Forgotten Story, a compilation of first hand stories told by the families of those touched by vaccine ... Continue Reading about Vaccine-Preventable Disease – The Forgotten Story
Direct Red – A Direct Look
I think the world has reached its quota of medical memoirs.If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.Formulaic stories of quirky patients, crises of conscience, awkward med students coming-of-age and overbearing superiors are all too much for me at this stage of my medical career. So why I might have been drawn to Gabriel Weston’s Direct Red – A Surgeon’s View of Her ... Continue Reading about Direct Red – A Direct Look