Precision Medicine vs. Public Health $$$ – NIH Funding Priorities Not A New Debate.

Paul Starr, Princeton Paul Starr’s observations (The Social Transformation of American Medicine, p.370) in 1982: “In 1964 a Presidential Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke (the DeBakey Commission) which had been appointed at the behest of the Lasker lobby, recommended a massive commitment of federal funds to establish ‘a national network of regional centers, […]

Planning for Evil vs. Planning for Goodness: Why Medicine Should Embrace the Social Sciences.

Mike Magee An article by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in last week’s New York Times Sunday Review, “How Auschwitz Is Misunderstood”, created a dramatic contrast to an address I delivered a few days earlier at a New York liberal arts college titled “Closing The Empathy Gap: Leveraging Healthcare Relationships”. Goldhagan’s major point was that the widely […]

“Medical-Industrial Complex” Feels The Summer Heat

Mike Magee It’s been quite a week for the “Medical-Industrial Complex”. This interwoven series of governmental, non-profit, academic and corporate relationships rivals the countries “Military-Industrial Complex” in its relentless consumption of America’s human treasures and financial capital, its’ non-transparency, its’ capacity to resist reform in an orderly and responsible manner, and its’ wide range of […]

AHC’s and The “Medical-Industrial Complex” : Re-establishing Appropriate Checks and Balances

Mike Magee In this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, there were dueling articles addressing the question whether this nation’s investment in Academic Medical Centers is helping or hurting when it comes to improving the quality and efficiency of our health care system. In the lead article, Gail Wilensky and her co-authors add up the […]

Eli Ginzberg in 1990: What Will Physicians Need To Function In The Future?

“They will need to hone problem solving abilities and understand the role of uncertainty in medical decision making; to gain access to, and to use effectively, the ever larger pool of medical information, which means acquiring computer literacy; to talk to patients and even more important, learn to listen; to develop a greater understanding of […]