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And it was back in the mid-1980s, and as I point out in a piece, that was when we are spending about eight percent of our gross domestic product on health care. And even then, we had the impression that so much of the excessive, aggressive medical treatment that took place at the end of life was not only unnecessary but it was cruel.
To make a coverage decision, doesn’t one have to make a medical judgment?
I was proud to share the stories of my friends at Georgetown Law who have suffered dire medical consequences because our student insurance does not cover contraception for the purpose of preventing pregnancy.
I went to Duke University in the medical track. And then I decided I wanted to do something more creative, so I switched to biochemistry at Nebraska.
The grounding in natural sciences which I obtained in the course of my medical studies, including preliminary examinations in botany, zoology, physics, and chemistry, was to become decisive in determining the trend of my literary work.
Was this an old disease, and, if so, which one? If it was new, what did that say about the state of medical knowledge? And in any case, how could physicians make sense of it?
Medical research in the twentieth century mostly takes place in the lab in the Renaissance, though, researchers went first and foremost to the library to see what the ancients had said.
There are three subjects on which the knowledge of the medical profession in general is woefully weak they are manners, morals, and medicine.
The sort of thinking at the time was, ‘Well, we’re giving you access to medical care which you wouldn’t otherwise be able to get, so your payment is that we get to use you in research.’
In the Radiation Laboratory we count it a privilege to do everything we can to assist our medical colleagues in the application of these new tools to the problems of human suffering.