Glory Days of Medical Education

    Reinforcing the public's adulation of medical research was the attitude of the researchers themselves; their view that medical research was a call­ing. their conspicuous disdain for commercialism, and their lack of inter­est in personal financial reward, provided that their laboratory and department were well supported. Medical scientists were hardly without ego or ambition. However, they sought nonmonetary rewards: approval and recognition from their peers and, for a lucky few, from society. The currency of academic medicine was not dollars but publications, appoint­ments, titles, memberships, and awards.

    Here was no better indication of the antipathy of medical schools toward commercialism than their attitude toward patents. In their view, the objective of medical research was to promote the public welfare, not to enable individuals or institutions to profit financially from inventions or discoveries. Most medical schools would not hold patents or accept royalties from patents that arose from university work. At the University of Rochester, for instance, neither George Comer nor the school's dean gave any thought to patenting Comer's discovery of the hormone prog­esterone. It was their position that no medical discovery should be com­mercially restricted, even for the benefit of a university.

    Although there were a few exceptions to this pattern, this was the policy at the two most important schools, Johns Hopkins and Harvard. At Hopkins, the dean declared that "universities (and particularly med­ical schools) do not belong in business. Any commercialization of the institutions will in the long run do the institutions great harm. Universities being supported by philanthropy and by State grants should not sell themselves in any way."  Neither the school nor individual faculty members owned patents, and the school refused royalties from patents growing out of medical school research." Harvard Medical School went further. Not only were patents by faculty members prohibited, but the school offered to provide legal advice to faculty members who desired help to prevent others from patenting their discoveries or inventions. When Harvard Medical School dedicated its patent on liver extract for the treatment of pernicious anemia to the public, it engaged in a "ven­omous discourse" with the "burned up" Eli Lilly Company, which had invested more than $1,000,000 in the work. Ully wanted "a special 'in'," but the school refused "in the belief that Harvard professors worked for the public interest." In research, as well as in education, American med­ical schools acted as a public trust.

The above is from p38 and 39 of Time to Heal by Dr. Kenneth M. Ludmerer.  There may be some OCR issues with the original because of our unjustifiable intellectual monopoly laws Google won't let me just cut and paste.  Those were really the glory days of medical education.

Medical 203, the precursor to the DSM...

Medical 203, the precursor to the DSM ungated.  This is not copyrighted despite Wiley's putting a copyright on it.  It was written by military officers, and is thus in the public domain.

As an American I sometimes disagree w...

As an American I sometimes disagree with my wonderful British wife about the absoluteness of freedom of speech.  I firmly believe that one's freedom of speech should never be diminished by someone else's offense.  That is, I can say whatever I want to offend anyone else no matter what. 

This does not include treason, which is what Islam4UK would be guilty of with their proposed march.  Not only should they not be allowed to march, but any attempt to should be meet with criminal charges of treason. 

Please join the Facebook group.

Kevin's Translation

I, along with one other classmate and one professor, am working on a couple papers about the history and policy of color blindness as a physical standard for the military.  Although the first paper is just about done, as part of it, I asked my amateur German scholar father-in-law, Kevin Melia, to translate an article for me, A Railway Accident a Hundred Years Ago as Reason for Systematic Testing of Colour Vision, Klin Monatsbl Augenheilkd. 1975 Jul;167(1):125-7.  Since this is the only English translation I know of, I've decided to post it online in case anyone else in the world would like it.  Note that as personal favor, it's not super polished, so you'll see Kevin's notes to me regarding his translation.  A Railway Accident a Hundred Years Ago as Reason for Systematic Testing of Colour Vision

Raritan Valley Line Improvements

    That, my friends, is the Raritan Valley Line pulling out of Fanwood station.  Upon getting on the train Sunday morning, I learned that starting in late 2008, and finishing just last week, the Raritan Valley Line had switched to all double-decker carriages. 



    On the same trip, while waiting in Newark Penn Station, I learned that Amtrak offers head of the line service to those of us in uniform.  While this is a laudable offer, I challenge the Amtrak management to do more.  Please lower your fairs for service members so that we might actually use Amtrak.  I travel between NY and DC somewhat frequently, and Amtrak doesn't even come close to offering a competitive price compared to driving.  Further, please fix the annoying policy of not permitting bicycles on trains between NY and DC.  Not only is the website unclear as to what the policy is, but the policy does nothing to promote freedom from our automobiles.  DC and NY are two of the most bike friendly (I realize that compared to somewhere like Holland we suck.) large American cities, but there is now way via public transportation to bring a bicycle between the two.

Final Kerkesner Photos

Here are all the photos I took while at Fort Indiantown Gap.  http://picasaweb.google.com/huckfinne/KerkesnerInTheField#.

Listen to Rory Stewart

Listening to NPR this afternoon a recent article in the London Review of Books by Rory Stewartwas brought to my attention.  He says what I've been thinking for a while although in much clearer terms and with more research.  We, the West, should reduce our troop commitment in Afghanistan to 20,000 soldiers specifically to keep Al Qaeda from using the country to attack us while concentrating our long term efforts on development.  I think one thing that keeps us from adopting this course is that even when a bomb blows up an empty building, commanders and policymakers can confidently say that the bomb was dropped and the building was blown-up.  That the status of the building after the bomb remains virtually unchanged from before is irrelevant.  As George Soros has written about development is much riskier.  However, in the long run, it is much cheaper than repeatedly dropping expensive bombs on a country that ran out of worthwhile targets a decade or more ago. 

Mr. Stewart does not go down the economic path to address whether our current course is sustainable in the long term for the US and the UK.  We continue to disinvest in our own countries while spending billions and billions in Afghanistan.  Not only do Americans need to read After the Empire by Emmanuel Todd to learn that the balence of trade is disastrous for us, but that literacy matters far more in Afghanistan than our JDAMs. 

The views expressed here are those of mine only, and are not to be
construed as those of the Department of the Navy or Department of
Defense.