(Author’s note: This article has been a year in the making. Each time another mass shooting makes headlines, I think, this is the moment to speak, and then life intervenes. The opportunity to contribute meaningfully feels missed. But the cruelest irony is this: Wait ten more days, and there will be another tragedy to make the conversation relevant again. That, in itself, is the most heartbreaking fact of all.)

“Study my …

Read more…

Recently, while reading The History of Medicine by William Bynum, I was struck by a line that quietly reframed a great deal of what we claim to believe about our profession. Reflecting on how medicine has evolved, Bynum writes: “When in doubt, remember the Hippocratic injunction that health is most likely to be found in the middle way.”

That notion, nuanced, modest, and deeply clinical, feels worlds apart from …

Read more…