A Doctor Who Fought Social Ills, Dies at 95 He used medicine to take on poverty, racism and the threat of nuclear destruction. I’ve heard about Jack Geiger for decades – but didn’t know what a picaresque life he led!  After reading his obit in the 12.29.20 NY Times, I can’t wait for the movie starring Harrison Ford to screen. Excerpts: NY Times Obit. Dr. H. Jack Geiger, who ran away to Harlem as a teenager and emerged a lifelong civil rights activist, helping to bring medical care and services to impoverished regions and to start two antiwar doctors groups that shared in Nobel Peace Prizes, died on Monday at … Continue reading →

A New Year Greeting The poet, W.H. Auden, matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1925 with a scholarship to study Biology. This poem should interest physicians, especially dermatologists. Had Auden become a biologist, think what the world might have lost! Osler quotes Lowell: “We reward the discoverer of an anaesthetic for the body and make him a member of all the societies, but him who finds a nepenthe for the soul we elect into the small Academy of the Immortals.’” (from John Keats: The Apothecary Poet, in The Alabama Student.) This poem was published in Scientific American in 1969 On this day tradition allots         to taking … Continue reading →

“Not many physicians have a disease named after them. Tomisaku (“Tomi”) Kawasaki, who has died in June 2020 at the age of 95, was one of the few. Kawasaki disease, a rare inflammatory autoimmune disorder found in young children, is his namesake. In recent months, this syndrome has been in the global media spotlight as pediatricians discuss its similarity to the complications of covid-19 in children.” The October 16, 2020 issue of the British Medical Journal has a moving obituary of this humble, but iconic pediatrician. A pdf of the BMJ obituary is attached below.

All the President’s Doctors: Walter Read and the Collusion of Anonymityby A.R. Pito Even today, Michael Balint’s seminal book, “The Doctor, His Patient and the Illness” is essential to understanding how patients are managed and treated by physicians and caregivers.  When one considers Team Trump at Walter Read we see this on a granular level. Excerpts from Balint’s book: Chapter 7: The Collusion of AnonymityIn difficult cases, the general practitioner [PCP} does not, as a rule, carry the burden of responsibility alone. The appearance of consultants introduces a number of new factors in the doctor-patient relationship The term the collusion of anonymity refers to who is responsible for the patient … Continue reading →

The past 20 years has seen progress in treating some skin disorders, in particular psoriasis and atopic dermatitis.  PubMed shows a big increase in the number of articles published on atopic dermatitis and psoriasis in contrast to those on other common skin disorders, such as warts and contact dermatitis. PubMed Psoriasis

Marketing Pharmaceutical Science for Prestige and Profit PREPRINT By David J Elpern, M.D. As a dermatologist, I have observed the profusion of research articles on psoriasis over the past two decades.  A graph of these from PubMed illustrates the five-fold increase in references since the first biologic, infliximab, was approved by the FDA in 1998. (Figure 1) This increase in scientific studies has coincided with a profusion of new therapies for psoriasis and may reflect the pharmaceutical industry’s interest in developing and promoting costly new treatments for this common chronic skin disorder.  With this in mind, a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Trial of Roflumilast Cream … Continue reading →