My Own Country: A Doctor's Story is Abraham Verghese's first book. [1] First published in 1994, it made that year's New York Times Notable Book list. [2] It is used in colleges and medical schools throughout North America and across the world because of the way it communicates the sense of empathy and compassion so often missing in medical school education in an era of high technology and reliance on computers as primary diagnostic tools.
My Own Country traces the story of a young infectious-disease physician in the mid-1980s in Johnson City, Tennessee, who began to treat patients with a then unknown disease. Because of the seemingly un-ending influx of patients with the same symptoms and for whom there was, as yet, no effective treatment, Dr. Verghese became, of necessity, the town's AIDS expert. As much as he gave to his patients in terms of caring and empathetic treatment, he gained back in terms of understanding and lasting lessons in how to heal when there is no cure. Often, he was the only one at his patients' bedside when family and friends, fearful of or in denial about the disease stayed away. From the sorrow of so many deaths and ugly displays of prejudice, from his giving of so much time and comfort, and the unraveling of his own domestic life and from the seeming hopelessness of the situation came a book of such richness and humanity that the story is uplifting and hopeful even as it plumbs the depths of human sadness.
The book was adapted for a 1998 TV movie starring Naveen Andrews.
Ryan Wayne White was an American teenager from Kokomo, Indiana, who became a national poster child for HIV/AIDS in the United States after his school barred him from attending classes following a diagnosis of AIDS.
Socialized medicine is a term used in the United States to describe and discuss systems of universal health care—medical and hospital care for all by means of government regulation of health care and subsidies derived from taxation. Because of historically negative associations with socialism in American culture, the term is usually used pejoratively in American political discourse. The term was first widely used in the United States by advocates of the American Medical Association in opposition to President Harry S. Truman's 1947 health care initiative. It was later used in opposition to Medicare. The Affordable Care Act has been described in terms of socialized medicine, but the act's objective is rather socialized insurance, not government ownership of hospitals and other facilities as is common in other nations.
Laurence David Kramer was an American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, and gay rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London, where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for the film Women in Love (1969) and received an Academy Award nomination for his work.
The House of God is a 1978 satirical novel by Samuel Shem. The novel follows a group of medical interns at a fictionalized version of Beth Israel Hospital over the course of a year in the early 1970s, focusing on the psychological harm and dehumanization caused by their residency training. The book, described by the New York Times as "raunchy, troubling and hilarious", was viewed as scandalous at the time of its publication, but has since acquired a cult following and is frequently included in the discussion of humanism, ethics, and training in medicine.
The sociology of health and illness, sociology of health and wellness, or health sociology examines the interaction between society and health. As a field of study it is interested in all aspects of life, including contemporary as well as historical influences, that impact and alter our health and wellbeing.
Abraham Verghese is an American physician and author. He is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor of Medicine, Vice Chair for the Theory & Practice of Medicine, and Internal Medicine Clerkship Director at Stanford University Medical School. In addition, he is the author of four best-selling books: two memoirs and two novels. He is the co-host with Eric Topol of the Medscape podcast Medicine and the Machine.
Barron H. Lerner is an American member of the faculty at the New York University Langone School of Medicine. He received his M.D. from Columbia in 1986 and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington in 1996. In addition to his research, Lerner practices internal medicine and teaches medical ethics and the history of medicine.
How Doctors Think is a book released in March 2007 by Jerome Groopman, the Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and staff writer for The New Yorker magazine.
Medical diagnosis is the process of determining which disease or condition explains a person's symptoms and signs. It is most often referred to as a diagnosis with the medical context being implicit. The information required for a diagnosis is typically collected from a history and physical examination of the person seeking medical care. Often, one or more diagnostic procedures, such as medical tests, are also done during the process. Sometimes the posthumous diagnosis is considered a kind of medical diagnosis.
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic is a 1987 book by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Randy Shilts. The book chronicles the discovery and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) with a special emphasis on government indifference and political infighting—specifically in the United States—to what was then perceived as a specifically gay disease. Shilts's premise is that AIDS was allowed to happen: while the disease is caused by a biological agent, incompetence and apathy toward those initially affected allowed its spread to become much worse.
Itzhak Brook is an adjunct professor of pediatrics and medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington DC. He specializes in infectious diseases. He is a past chairman of the Anti-infective Drug Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and chaired the Committee when AZT was approved for the treatment of HIV/AIDS in 1987.
Linda Jane Laubenstein was an American physician and early HIV/AIDS researcher. She was among the first doctors in the United States to recognize the AIDS epidemic of the early 1980s; she co-authored the first article linking AIDS with Kaposi's sarcoma.
Initial events and trends in the discussion of HIV and AIDS in mass media contributed to the stigma and discrimination against those affected with the disease. Later discussion, sometimes led by HIV+ individuals themselves, moved toward advocacy and education on disease prevention and management. The UNESCO report on Journalism Education says, "Well researched television content can create public awareness about HIV prevention, treatment, care and support can potentially influence the development and implementation of relevant policies."
Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients is a book by the British physician and academic Ben Goldacre about the pharmaceutical industry, its relationship with the medical profession, and the extent to which it controls academic research into its own products. It was published in the UK in September 2012 by the Fourth Estate imprint of HarperCollins, and in the United States in February 2013 by Faber and Faber.
When Breath Becomes Air is a non-fiction autobiographical book written by American neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi. It is a memoir about his life and battling stage IV metastatic lung cancer. It was posthumously published by Random House on January 12, 2016.
Burton James Lee III was a physician and oncologist who is best known for having been Physician to the President under President George H. W. Bush and (briefly) Bill Clinton. He also served on the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic.
Socio-political activism to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS as well as to advance the effective treatment and care of people with AIDS (PWAs) has taken place in multiple locations since the 1980s. The evolution of the disease's progress into what's known as the HIV/AIDS pandemic has resulted in various social movements fighting to change both government policies and the broader popular culture inside of different areas. These groups have interacted in a complex fashion with others engaged in related forms of social justice campaigning, with this continuing on to this day.
The Edinburgh City Hospital was a hospital in Colinton, Edinburgh, opened in 1903 for the treatment of infectious diseases. As the pattern of infectious disease changed, the need for in-patients facilities to treat them diminished. While still remaining the regional centre for infectious disease, in the latter half of the 20th century the hospital facilities diversified with specialist units established for respiratory disease, ear, nose and throat surgery, maxillo-facial surgery, care of the elderly and latterly HIV/AIDS. The hospital closed in 1999 and was redeveloped as residential housing, known as Greenbank Village.
The Broderip Ward was a ward at the Middlesex Hospital in Fitzrovia, London. It was the first ward dedicated to the care and treatment of people affected by HIV/AIDS in the United Kingdom.
James M. Oleske is an American pediatrician and HIV/AIDs researcher who is the emeritus François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Professor of Pediatrics at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey. He is best known for his pioneering work in identifying HIV/AIDS as a pediatric disease, and treating and researching it beginning in the 1980s. He published one of the first articles identifying HIV/AIDS in children in JAMA in 1983 and was a co-author of one of the articles by Robert Gallo and others identifying the virus in Science in 1984.
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