Some studies have suggested that people having two drinks a day live longer than those that have none or those that have four or more. It just so happens that all the basic drinks have the same alcohol content and thus are interchangeable. Twelve ounces of 5% beer, 5 ounces of 12% wine, or one […]

Several years ago I took a one week course in Internal Medicine at UCSF. It turned out to be a very intensive review of what’s new in all the subspecialties of medicine. The ten 50-minute lectures a day for five days – sequentially nonstop from 8 a.m. to 12:10 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. until 5:10 […]

The American Thoracic Society meetings are being held in Boston this week. I’m writing this on a Macintosh while learning the “Mac” at my daughter Julie’s apartment a short distance from the Hynes Convention Center. The 11,000 registrants represent 4000 international guests including three air bus loads from the UK. Many countries in Europe, Asia, […]

California once had a Governor who felt there should be vertical mobility in the health care field. He stated that if a nurses aid wants to become a doctor, there should be a training program to get there… Aren’t those determinants essentially fixed when two gametes become a zygote? Arnold S. Relman, M.D., Editor NEJM […]

A professor of medicine told his students, “Make your textbooks and journals your friends. And always read one popular publication such as Reader’s Digest to keep up with your patients.” This has now evolved into “you better watch American Medical Television (AMT) for two hours every Saturday morning to keep up with your patients.” They […]

The influenza epidemic has come and gone. The primary physicians have done a “humongous” job in restraint by keeping patients out of the hospitals. This particular virus seemed to cause various pains, some times in the right chest, some times in the left chest, some times in the head, and usually all over. To exchange […]

The Northridge 6.6 Earthquake at 4:31 a.m. on January 17, 1994, was not the “Big One.” But it did have a death toll of over 60 with16 of those deaths occurring in one apartment building. That building not only had parking spaces on the first floor but living units as well, making them death traps. […]

Maxis, the computer game software company based in Orinda, has produced the game SimHealth: A Democracy and Society Computer Simulation, a game that lets you construct your own national health care strategy and try it out in a simulated U. S. Economy. You can start with 1) the Clinton system, 2) the Republican alternative of […]

MISTAKES – Can We Avoid Them or just Cover Them Up? It’s been said that doctors can bury their mistakes; attorneys can lock up their mistakes; but architects can only advise their clients to grow bushes and vines. A patient was brought in by her husband with recurrent green phlegm and exacerbation of her wheezing. […]

Watch for those fake SMILES. Psychologists report (Science 262:336) that they have separated the smiles that evoke positive emotions from those that don’t. If the smile, even if forced, involves certain muscles around the eye (instead of just those around the mouth) it activates an area in the left hemisphere of the brain associated with […]