During the past two weeks, as the terrorism-alert logo on America’s television screens switched to orange, I began receiving the same worried phone calls from my patients that I had received during the fall of 2001. They told me they were not sleeping, thinking constantly about bombs or rushing to buy emergency supplies. In the […]
Marc Siegel
Marc Siegel is an Associate Professor of Medicine and a Fellow in the Master Scholars Society at New York University School of Medicine.
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Doctor No
It now appears that President Bush plans to privatize Medicare, meaning that HMOs could soon assume a prominent place in America’s health-care system for the elderly. Past experience has already taught us that such a scheme won’t work for seniors, who are likely to have multiple health-care needs that must be addressed in a timely […]
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The ABCs of Smallpox
Medicine depends on probability: the probability of a disease occurring, the likelihood that it will spread or can be prevented, the odds of a side effect resulting from a tool of treatment or prevention. A risk-benefit analysis evaluates the risk of a disease versus what doctors can do to prevent or treat it. With smallpox, […]
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Cloudy Judgment
Vladmir Putin’s decision to storm and gas a theater in Moscow — where Chechen terrorists had taken about 700 hostages — was an obvious call; circumstances had left him with little choice. But if the decision to storm the theater was fundamentally just, the execution of the operation by security personnel raises a number of […]
