It doesn’t take long in the practice of medicine, indeed in the training for the practice of medicine, to learn humility. To understand our limits in our understanding of a disease process, in our abilities to heal patients, and in our own importance in the grand scheme of things. Yet as physicians and as experts […]
Nobel Peace Prize Recognizes Sexual Violence
The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege for their work to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of armed conflict and I couldn’t be more elated. Nadia Murad and Dr. Denis Mukwege have “both put their own personal security at risk by courageously combatting war […]
Your Infectious Disease Physician is Probably a Democrat
Data compiled by researchers at Yale and publicized by the New York Times suggests that some medical specialities, including infectious disease, lean heavily Democratic, while others such as surgery, lean heavily Republican. Only 23% of the infectious disease physicians sampled were registered with the Republican party. I am not surprised. The report also suggests that the specialties […]
America’s Ebola Mayhem Continues
An elderly Black woman goes to visit her family in Jamaica. Soon after returning home to the United States she has a fever and presents to the Emergency Room for evaluation. She is triaged into a solitary room where no-one takes her vitals and no-one evaluates her. Instead, the Emergency Room physician places a call […]
Dying of AIDS in 2008 in the United States
Since the mid-1990s when combination antiretroviral therapy became available in the United States, HIV has quickly become a chronic condition. “Like diabetes” we often say. AIDS is a problem of “Africa” and other “overseas” nations, the general consensus goes. Yet, in the United States, tens of thousands of people are newly infected with HIV on […]