EDITORIAL: Noble Brains, Healthy Lives Mark Sloan, MD Humans have long sought to make sense of the brain. Each age has puzzled over this oddly-shaped organ and its role in the complex workings of the body. In times long past, heated debates erupted among scientists and philosophers: Is the brain a cold or a hot […]

EDITORIAL: Touching the Patient by Rob Nied, MD At the 2014 Australian Open, Stan Wawrinka became the first man since 2009 to win a Grand Slam tennis tournament outside the Big Four of Federer, Djokovic, Murray and Nadal. In the championship match, he beat Nadal, who was suffering from a back injury. How much low […]

Nathaniel S. Lehrman, MD ABSTRACT In recent decades, American perceptions of homosexuality have changed significantly, largely because of the questionable concept of the homosexual “orientation”: a genetic or biological, rather than a behavioral, etiology. These newer beliefs greatly influence how its morbidity, mortality, and social impact are seen, often causing us to overlook how the […]

Sham Peer Review: the Shocking Story of Raymond A. Long, M.D. Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D.  It was a story that rocked the little town of St. Albans, Vermont: “Surgeon Accuses St. Albans Hospital of Deliberately Infecting His Patients.”1 According to the statewide news website, VTDigger.org, “An orthopedic surgeon is suing Northwestern Medical Center in […]

A Neurologist’s Notebook: THE CATASTROPHE Spalding Gray’s brain injury By Oliver Sacks, MD THE NEW YORKER | April 27, 2015 In July of 2003, my neurological colleague Orrin Devinsky and I were consulted by Spalding Gray, the actor and writer who was famous for his brilliant autobiographical monologues, an art form he had virtually invented. […]

Sonoma Medicine | The magazine of the Sonoma County Medical Association | July 2016 EDITORIAL: Reducing Opioid Prescriptions Mary Maddux-González, MD Seventy-eight Americans die every day from an opioid overdose, and more than half of these overdoses involve an opioid prescribed by a physician. Since 1999, both opioid prescriptions and opioid overdose deaths have quadrupled. Meanwhile, […]

Defining Emergency Medicine EDITORIAL Allan Bernstein, MD Who gets to define emergency medicine? Is it the doctors, the EMTs, the insurance companies or the 911 operators? As evident from the articles in this issue of Sonoma Medicine, there are lots of competing interests. No one can argue about the need and benefit of a trauma […]

Dr. Rosen:       Last week everyone seemed depressed over the happenings in medicine. Dr. Milton:      We have had an influx of new welfare patients into our HMO. We’re adjusting. Dr. Ruth:        We have not participated in accepting the MediCal patients who have been newly added to our HMO. Dr. Edwards:  I’ve always had a base of […]

Dr. Rosen:       What’s new in Obamacare this week with the welfare patients being placed in HMOs? Dr. Dave:         The oppression is beginning early. We had eliminated referrals from what appeared like HMOs except for the little Medical mark after the HMO name. Dr. Rosen:       We had an outside business consultant review our finances. My attorney […]

Dr. Rosen:       The first year of the new health care reform has been concluded. Has it affected any of our practices? Dr. Edwards:  It has affected my practice in surprising ways. Not only with the Medicaid patients who have been incorporated into our HMOs, but also our Medicare patients who have experience untold denials of […]