Abraham Verghese

I didn't read a book, at least not on the beach, because again it felt strange to be using words on a page to create signals to transport me to another place when I was already in another place… More »

Will Democrats act boldly and unite for the cause to vote for health care reform?… More »

Sunday's vote will be historic -- and we won't be the only ones watching: Europe is also interested to see how the debate in Washington turns out.… More »

When your pants are on fire, most everyone looks for water rather than debating the flammability of the material… More »

I have been traveling around the country these last two weeks, and it astonishes me to see how soon the dialogue which might begin as a literary one or a medical one turns to health care and health care reform. Health care is not just filling pages of newsprint. It is causing heartburn in Middle America, it's clearly triggering insomnia, and it is occupying significant worry space in the cerebral hemispheres. Whatever momentum there was for reform in the summer…… More »

Translation: use your eyes, take a good history, weight the patient and get a few simple blood tests, and you can predict risk far better than a panel of genetic tests.… More »

For one who has an interest in the body as text, airports are treasure troves of information. It seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight, if it does nothing else, allows one the opportunity to make prolonged observations about one's fellow travelers. "Why airports?" you might ask. Well, for one thing there is the lighting--the big picture windows that allow you to see planes taking off…… More »

In 1996 a surgeon was operating on a rare malignant tumor when he accidentally cut himself. Some months later he developed an identical tumor at the very spot he had injured. Fortunately, this new cancer responded to treatment. Still, the idea of this means of cancer genesis--a "catching cancer" if you will--was mind boggling at the time. Mind you, this was the height of the HIV era and we were seeing a lot of patients with Kaposi's sarcoma (another cancer) and…… More »

I watched an extraordinary documentary last night, right on my computer. A Walk To Beautiful, set in Ethiopia, has special meaning for me because it tells the story of childbirth injury and the resultant fistula, and because the Hamlins--pioneers of the surgical repair of fistula--were my professors in medical school. You could hardly live in Addis Ababa and not be moved by the suffering of women with fistula, or not know of the Hamlins' legacy. Not surprisingly,…… More »

Of late we Americans have discovered Yemen, thanks to a foiled terrorist and the recognition of a burgeoning Al Qaeda camp in that country. The front page of the New York Times today has a story about Yemen, complete with map. But it fails to mention the one thing that will most impress you if you visit Yemen and it's a plant called qat. You can't fathom Yemen (or Somalia for that matter) if you don't understand qat--no map can quite explain its influence on…… More »

Instead I worry we will get to a point where if you are missing a finger and show up in a hospital, no one will believe you till they get an MRI, CAT scan and an orthopedic consult.… More »

An axiom in this debate has always been that every dollar spent on health care is a dollar of income for someone and any attempt to reign in costs will bring vitriolic responses and dedicated opposition. Well, we saw that.… More »

Lets give ourselves a chance at precise diagnosis before we treat. That means good specimens, hand carried, examined by the people who care for the patient. Proxy wars never seem to work. Find the enemy and win the firefight is a good philosophy for infectious diseases as it is for war. Diagnosis matters.… More »

The time of year has come when we interview final year medical students from across the country applying for internships. I experience deja vu when I see the candidates appear in their suits, because we have been doing these interviews twice a week for some weeks. And also because I feel kinship with them, as if I have just been in their shoes, although (I am shocked to realize) it has actually been 25 years. I try to imagine what these interns-to-be will…… More »

But here's the rub: we can never know which cancer has been over-diagnosed at the time of diagnosis. We can only agree that it was over-diagnosis if the individual is never treated (and turns out to be fine) or dies of something else and the cancer turns out not to be important. Since we can't know ahead of time, we generally wind up treating everybody.… More »

I am at the First Stanford Symposium on Bedside Medicine, and we have the world's leading experts on the diagnostic examination gathered here. It is a small group who still believe there is value in examining the patient, even in this era of imaging and technology.An anthropologist from Mars looking at our hospitals might conclude that the 'work' of medicine takes place in rooms far removed from the patient, typically in front of a computer screen. The actual…… More »

What the President and our politicians should have known is that our personal health is the one arena of our life (the other being our love life) where reason and logic get thrown out of the window.… More »

Looking across and seeing the twin towers standing, could anyone have predicted how the world would change? Or how magazines would fare over the next decade?… More »

So seriously, does anyone believe that we doctors can own a hospital (or sleep center if you are a sleep specialist, or imaging center, or outpatient surgery center, or chemo center) and be totally objective about referring patients there?… More »

I attended a wonderful presentation a few days ago by Ajit Varki, a physician and scientist at the University of California San Diego and head of the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny. That word, "anthropogeny" was a new one for me. It means, 'explaining the origin of humans, or 'the science or study of human generation.' Varki's long standing interest in sialic acid receptors that are plentiful in all our cells led him to discover that we…… More »