interview
rita charon

Q: How is a parallel chart different from a diary?

A: It doesn’t absolve the physician from having to write down a patient’s blood pressure or glucose reading. It’s a way to remember the other dimensions of care—your own response or concerns. Narrative skills help in articulating a disagreement, help everyone tolerate the reality that there are many ways to look at something. It is a matter of enlarging the perspective, one patient at a time.

“Near-universal coverage will become unaffordable unless serious cost controls are put into place.”
proto, a prefix of progress, connotes first, novel, experimental. Alone, it conjures an entire world of the new: discoveries, directions, ideas. In taking proto as its name, this magazine stakes its ground on medicine’s leading edge—exploring breakthroughs, dissecting controversies and opening a forum for informed debate.
celiac

Celiac Disease: Eating Away at You

Avoid gluten, and celiac disease loses its sting. But research continues, and breakthroughs might treat other disorders too.

biopolis

The Science Factory

At Singapore’s gleaming Biopolis complex, researchers get all the money and lab support they need. What they don’t get is time.

vision

Hope in Sight

When the retina fails, the body’s window on the world slams shut. These futuristic treatments may pry it open again.

endothelin

Still Beyond Reach

The protein endothelin shows up everywhere, so scientists hoped blocking its action could treat many diseases. It hasn’t happened—yet.

drug samples

The Cost of Free Drugs

Handouts from drug companies might seem helpful, but some experts contend that they create conflicts of interest and raise prescription costs.

medical homes

Collaborative Care

Could “medical homes,” where every patient has a physician-led support team, improve health and reduce costs? Early evidence says yes.

NEAD Chains

Paying It Forward

Could a new strategy help reduce the number of people who die waiting for kidney transplants?

second opinion

“While I sympathize with physicians who encounter a ‘patient from hell,’ I cannot fathom asking patients to waive their right to complain about their physician on online review sites, a practice Jeffrey Segal champions (“Don’t Tread on M.D.,” Fall 2009). It may not be outright blackmail, but the still-godlike status of M.D.’s makes patients reluctant to disappoint their physician by not signing such an agreement.”

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Siemens
defined

ghostbusting [gōst 'bə-stiŋ] n: a term adopted in January 2009 by editors at the journal Blood for a movement to ban journal articles ghostwritten by uncredited contributors financed by drug companies.