Q&A with The Chronicle
I recently spoke with Duke University’s The Chronicle about gender pay disparity in research medicine.
Click here to see the Q&A…
I will not be posting any new material to my website until I finish enjoying the holiday season, a season that will culminate with a trip to Minnesota to visit my family. That means leaving the warm comfort of my North Carolina home, for what I expect to be some seriously cold weather. But what…
A recent Time magazine article by Steven Brill has received a lot of attention, for highlighting some of the crazy ways that hospital set their prices. One quote in particular caught my attention. It had to do with what hospitals call the charge master, which is essentially a big list of what they charge for…
I write frequently about the importance of perspective taking in clinician/patient interaction. Seeing the world through other people’s eyes is also a crucial moral and political skill. No surprise then that Abe Lincoln showed great perspective taking abilities. Consider these words, from an 1854 speech on slavery: I think I have no prejudice against the…
One of the great pleasures of blogging is reaching new audiences and, better yet, interacting with new people. On the other hand, blogging also puts us bloggers into contact with unpleasant commenters. This unpleasantness has compelled me to establish some guidelines for my own on-line behavior. First, I strive always to blog, and to comment…
Somewhere near where you live, a couple will discover this week that they are infertile and that if they want biological children of their own, they are going to need in vitro fertilization (or IVF). According to treatment protocol, the woman will need to take powerful medicines to ramp up her production of fertilizable eggs….
In a wonderful New Yorker article titled “The Hangover,” Nick Paumgarten writes about the strange mix of private and government forces that led to the Spanish fiscal crisis. In a wonderful sentence, he evokes one such force, the almost invisibility of debt: It is often hard to perceive an economic crisis. Debt doesn’t look like…