When I started this column over three years ago, Eugene D Robin, MD, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Physiology at Stanford gave me some insight concerning the Hippocratic Oath. I had known Dr Robin as one of the foremost investigators after reading some of his hundreds of research articles over the years. As I met […]

“When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer ‘Present’ or ‘Not guilty.’” Theodore Roosevelt Many large corporations, which are forbidden by law to donate to political parties, donated rather large sums of moneys to the political conventions. The corporations did not want media exposure which might alienate […]

Doctor Paul Striker, a New York plastic surgeon, estimates that one in five members of Congress has undergone some form of plastic surgery. We always knew that politicians try to make themselves look better than they really are, but did we ever suspect that they would go to this extent? Herb Caen recently reported that […]

Patient: I’d like this prescription filled. Druggist: That will be ninety eight dollars. Patient: How much is the placebo? (After Parker) A recent FP-HMO (For Profit Health Maintenance Organization) merger netted nearly $1 billion for one individual. The profit from health care dollars for this one individual would have covered the health care overhead for […]

The American Thoracic Society and its International conference continues to enlarge. Of 15,000 registrants, there were 12,000 professionals including 3,000 international physicians who made the trek to New Orleans this year. It was a pleasure to be sharing ideas with colleagues from three continents over breakfast and en route to conferences. Valentine Poppa, a member […]

Sacramento has a new cover lady. Congratulation to Sister Bridget McCarthy, Sacramento’s Business Woman of the year. The recent staff meeting of Mercy General Hospital at the Hyatt regency was an honest attempt at dialogue among the various management groups, whose talk about how fine a job they were doing with the lives they were […]

Congratulations to Doctor William Au, the new Chief of Staff of Sutter who took a firm leadership position at his first meeting. He wants to strive for collegiality amongst the staff members. What a refreshing breeze. Nothing could stop us if we treated each other as colleagues. The Orange County REGISTER reports that the lady […]

The nurse was confused. The patient was confused. And the family became confused when they read their father’s death certificate: The doctor in frustration had entered as the cause of death: Confusion. Philip K. Howard, author of The Death of Common Sense, states “Humans may be flawed, but at least they can think and act […]

Atrocities against women continue. Egypt has done another reversal on female circumcision. After CNN aired footage of an amateur cutting away the clitoris of a screaming 10-year-old girl in September 1994, the government again allowed hospitals to do the “procedure” stating that the ban implemented in 1959 had not changed practice. This practice was continued […]

The continuing saga of the “biomedical rape” of women at UCI’s fertility clinic continues to get more complicated. Some of these eggs have been implanted without donors or recipients consent and have produced children with biologic parentage in doubt. A second doctor is out of the country developing a huge practice in Chile. However, the […]