This morning marked a sad ending to my night shift. It was, or rather, had been, at a small community hospital in a tiny New England town, nestled in the backyards of where I was born and raised. But in just a few days, it will cease to exist as a hospital and morph into a stand-alone ER. Before I wrapped up my final shift, I sat down with a …
Like many of my fellow physicians, I suspect I’m two things: a child of immigrants and a child of a physician. That combination gave me a unique window into two fundamental systems, health care and global economics, long before I studied either formally. I saw the sacrifices and hard choices required to navigate both, often simultaneously, with no geographic boundary ever limiting our responsibilities.
Many vivid memories from childhood have stayed …
Why taxing remittances harms families and global health care
Many moons ago, I worked in a forensics lab for a pair of professors who were husband and wife—a chemistry dynamic duo. I had a wonderful time in bench research, learning about different explosives and even doing site visits in Los Alamos, where many of the greatest scientific minds came together to help the U.S. win the war against the Axis powers during World War II. It was a surreal …
The NIH is under fire: Why public trust in science is fading
Over coffee and the usual banter in the doctor’s lounge, a group of physicians takes a break from seeing patients after donning off their PPE. The TV is blasting the news, largely ignored, until the focus turns to the COVID-19 vaccine. The newscaster announced that the first group to receive the vaccine would be health care workers. Everyone stops talking; all gaze at the wall-mounted screen. And it …
What worries this physician about the COVID-19 vaccine
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