Synergy and serendipity often play a big part in medical and scientific advances.
I had met many wounded veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center when I was researching my 2009 novel 'The Turnaround,' and I continue to be very interested in how returning servicemen and women deal with their new lives back home and how they're treated by America.
I don't believe medical discoveries are doing much to advance human life. As fast as we create ways to extend it we are inventing ways to shorten it.
It's really hard for me to memorize the medical jargon if I don't know the meaning of every single word. So I do have to do a little Wikipedia/YouTube research to figure out what I'm talking about.
The smuggling and distribution of misbranded drugs and medical devices of uncertain foreign origin has the potential for serious harm to patients.
My plan always was to play college football, hope to get a few snaps in and then go on to medical school. As I went further in my career and got to my junior year, I realized as I looked around, ‘I got a shot here, and I might as well go after it.’
The fact that he didn't get credit for a while is more the story of social injustice. But his own spirit wasn't driven by that, and wasn't dependent upon that. He just wished he had the cash to go to medical school.
Health care historically has been a very siloed field that's organized around medical specialties - urology, cardiac surgery, and so forth - and around the supply of these specialty services. The patient is the ping-pong ball that moves from service to service.
We say women have made great strides: in biology, in many areas of chemistry, in many places, women are now the majority of medical students. But when I began my career, that wasn't the case. There were very strong stereotypes in biology and medicine.
I used to be a model and a medical test subject, though never at the same time. And since we didn't have much money when I was a kid, I know how to fish and hunt for my supper. And I used to win awards in speech in high school, which comes in handy when I speak to 200 people at a writers' conference.
Going back to the '70s and '80s I was one of the athletes who believed in true sport. I never took medical supplements, believed in diet and exercising. I always represent clean athletes.
You put on this set of goggles, and within seconds, your brain is convinced you're now in a different, virtual environment. You're somewhere else, and that somewhere else may be a video game, it may be in a real-time movie, a museum exhibit, or a medical surgical training app.
Medical need is an infinitely expandable concept. There is always one more marginal procedure that can be done. There is no end to the medical and surgical treatments that a technologically sophisticated and advanced society can give to aging bodies.
When I last looked, there weren't queues of eager guys under 40 hanging outside single ladies' doors begging them to give up work and have their babies. It takes two to tango and the same number, without medical help, to make a child.
More and more jobs are applying cutting-edge technologies and now demand deeper knowledge of math and science in positions that most people don't think of as STEM-related, including machinists, electricians, auto techs, medical technicians, plumbers and pipefitters.
The physician's highest calling, his only calling, is to make sick people healthy - to heal, as it is termed.
Real Texans don't want any woman to die of cancer because she can't get decent health care or medical advice. Real Texans don't want any woman to lose control of her life because she can't get birth control.
I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful.
Being transgender is not just a medical transition.
I'm involved with Kid One Transport and Studio by the Tracks in Alabama. Kid One literally transports kids to better health by giving them transportation they may need to get medical care. Studio by the Tracks is an art outlet for mentally challenged children.
