The education and training of doctors needs a thorough review.
Concerns include the undue influence of the pharmaceutical industry, the lack of social/cultural/aging population training, the lack of a nutrition curriculum, the impact of corrupt medical journals, the role of AI and big tech. With a renewed emphasis on “first, do no harm,” we’ll have better trained and informed doctors.
July 28, 2026
Despite the passage of time, the basic medical school curriculum hasn’t changed all that much. A person technically holds the academic title of an allopathic doctor (MD) as soon as they graduate. However, to actually practice medicine and treat patients independently, they are legally required to complete a residency program, which typically takes anywhere from 3 to 7 years depending ...
moreMarch 20, 2026
Turning the calendar back to the 5th century BCE, Hippocrates emerged as a leader in medical research and thought. Rather than turning to the gods as before, he is generally credited with using observation of the body as a basis for medical knowledge. He turned his attention to changes in diet, beneficial drugs, and strategies to keep the body in balance. The Hippocratic Corpus— the collected wr...
moreOctober 15, 2024
After years of witnessing the demise of the American health care system, I’ve come to think of the American Medical Association as primarily a self-serving, duplicitous organization. I grew up thinking that it was almost a priestly sect that cared about health and healing. Ten years of working in the health insurance industry opened my eyes. Happily, the AMA’s membership is going down, not sim...
moreAugust 1, 2024
In 1910, two of the richest men in America – Nelson D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie – hired Abraham Flexner to review medical institutions across North America. The two had questions regarding the quality of the medical teaching facilities in the US and Canada. Despite his non-medical background, focused solely on the classics, Abraham Flexner was chosen for his perceived objectivity. Unlik...
moreJanuary 15, 2024
“Physician, heal thyself” is a proverb that has been used in literary texts from at least the 6th century B.C. The moral of the proverb is that physicians should care for themselves in order to better care for the illnesses of others. Unfortunately for all of us, more and more doctors and nurses are doing just that - but by leaving the profession. And worse according to Wendell Potter of Healt...
moreAugust 15, 2024
While the term whistleblower didn’t really make it into popular use until the 1970s, brave individuals have been reporting corruption and abuse for centuries. A current definition of a whistleblower is “An employee of an organization who reports abuse, fraud, corruption, and/or dangers to public health and safety. These individuals often have to turn to public reporting when internal reporting...
moreFebruary 15, 2023
The first question you might ask is - Can a book really change your life? If you asked someone who has read and followed AA’s “Big Book” (written in 1939, printed in over 70 languages, and still considered AA’s basic text), they would say yes. That’s how I feel about The Myth of Normal. The book is 500 pages of intense, illuminating, crucial topics that make it, at times, a challenge to ...
moreSeptember 30, 2019
The word "Old" is so laden with negativity, we hardly ever use it. Except, of course, if you really want to go for the jugular and then it’s usually accompanied by old fart, old bag, old dog with no new tricks, and possibly “old timer” but that is kind of dear and saved for men. Women aren’t afforded the same courtesy and become “cute or sweetie.” I stumbled into the current use of the...
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