Expertise Is The Mantra Of Modern Medicine.

You May Not Control Life's Circumstances, But Getting To Be The Author Of Your Life Means Getting To Control What You Do With Them.

After Readinf Some Essay On The Nature Of Human Fallibility, I Was Very Aware That We Are The Recipients Of A Huge Amount Of Discovery Over The Last Century. Medicine Exemplifies This. And That Has Transitioned Us From A World In Which People's Lives Were Mostly Governed By Ignorance To One That's Constrained By Ineptitude. A Century Ago, We Didn't Know, For Instance, What Diseases Afflicted Us, What Their Nature Really Was, Or What To Do About Them. And That Has Changed.

My Biggest Fear, That 27 Percent Of Americans Under 65 Have An Existing Health Condition That, Without The Protections Of The Affordable Care Act, Would Mean They Would - Could Be Automatically Excluded From Insurance Coverage. Before The Aca, They Wouldn't Have Been Able To Get Insurance Coverage On The Individual Market, You Know, If You're A Freelancer Or If You Had A Small Business Or The Like.

We Always Hope For The Easy Fix: The One Simple Change That Will Erase A Problem In A Stroke. But Few Things In Life Work This Way. Instead, Success Requires Making A Hundred Small Steps Go Right - One After The Other, No Slipups, No Goofs, Everyone Pitching In.

The Possibilities And Probabilities Are All We Have To Work With In Medicine, Though. What We Are Drawn To In This Imperfect Science, What We In Fact Covet In Our Way, Is The Alterable Moment-the Fragile But Crystalline Opportunity For One's Know-how, Ability, Or Just Gut Instinct To Change The Course Of Another's Life For The Better.