Health policy - Alpha Omega Alpha

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David P. Hill 

Editorial 

Alpha Omega Alpha and health policy 

Edward D. Harris, Jr., MD 

Take a look at our new section, “Health Policy,” on page 25. 

It has evolved from our newly revised motto and mission 

statement: 

Άξιον ωφελείν τους αλγούντας 

Be Worthy to Serve the Suffering 

Mission Statement: Alpha Omega Alpha—dedicated to the 

belief that in the profession of medicine we will improve care 

for all by: 

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the community 

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As part of the reassessment by our board of directors of 

AΩA’s role in modern medicine, we have come to believe 

that The Pharos must take part in developing and discussing 

thoughts about the current state and future goals for U.S. 

health care. Debatable issues of health policy will not end with 

the Congress passing reform bills in the fall. We have asked Dr. 

John Kastor, a new member of our editorial board, to edit this 

section. Be warned—he may well recruit essays from you! Send 

submissions to us at: Alpha Omega Alpha, 525 Middlefield 

Road, Suite 130, Menlo Park, California 94025, or e-mail them 

to info@alphaomegaalpha.org. 

Our initial essay in this series is an update of an essay originally 

published in The Pharos in Autumn 1999, “Mene, mene, 

tekel upharsin comes to medicine—redux,” by Dr. Robert H. 

Moser of our editorial board. Please read it again or for the first 

time. It is both striking and depressing because, although it was 

published ten years ago, our country’s system of practice and 

payment for health care services has not improved. 

As President Obama turned to go back into the White 

House after announcing the nomination of Regina Benjamin as 

Surgeon General on July 13, a reporter shouted, “Mr. President, 

there are many senators who hope you will take an interest in 

reforming health care.” Mr. Obama turned, flashed that smile, 

pointed at the reporter and said, “Bill, that’s a good one!” The 

irony and humor spring from the comments that the President 

had just made before announcing Dr. Benjamin’s nomination. 

He said, among other powerful challenges to Congress, 

“Inaction [on revision of health care policy] is not an option. . . . 

We are going to make this thing happen, because the American 

people definitely need it!” 

Bob Moser identifies and cites the “peripheral health 

economy (PHE)” as a major cause of excess costs of U.S. health 

care. The PHE includes everyone who is making money from 

health care without being directly involved in patient care (e.g., 

the “core health economy”—doctors, nurses, and health care 

facilities), including for-profit insurance companies and pharmaceutical/device 

companies. 

One particularly expensive component of the PHE is 

direct-to- consumer advertising of drugs. First, a disclaimer. 

I watch sports and Congressional hearings on television. All 

these events are funded by advertising. There are many ads for 

which I don’t put the TV on mute, but rather enjoy. A couple 

of favorites: 

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for the Dalmation dog to fetch, which it does, as expected. But 

then, one of the Budweiser draft horses, standing nearby, goes 

rushing off and returns with a large log in its mouth and drops 

it at the man’s foot. He says, “Show-off!” 

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back in the States, frequent pictures of himself from his camera 

phone. She is forlorn with his absence, seeing on her phone his 

face with the Eiffel tower in the background. She doesn’t hear 

him singing, “I think that possibly, maybe I’m falling for you.” 

Then, while sitting on a river bank, she gets another photo . . . 

and it is of her taken ten yards away! He has returned. Hugs 

and happiness. I am so impressed with the ad, I have no idea 

which company is sponsoring it. 

In contrast, ads for OTC and prescription drugs are neither 

entertaining nor benign, and not only can they increase the 

costs of health care, they can even be harmful to patients. Here 

are two examples, permitted by federal legislation: 

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saying, “In ninety days, if you don’t notice an improvement 

in osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, gout, or 

other forms of arthritis, send back the bottle for your money 

back, and if you call this number now, we give you the first 

thirty days free!” Of course, this and other OTC remedies are 

not regulated. No proof of efficacy or safety is required, nor do 

any exist. All the company needs is to gather in more money 

from viewers than it costs to buy the TV minutes to hawk its 

medicine and pay back the tiny number of those who don’t 

benefit from the placebo effect and have the determination to 

apply for a rebate. 

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is a direct attack on the use of generic alternatives. It urges the 

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drug plan’s determination that another statin—less 

expensive but apparently equally efficacious—will be substi- 

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by patients, and are significant. 

While debating whether or not to tax the wealthy to cover 

universal care costs, Congress should examine its past mistakes, 

including permitting direct-to- consumer advertising of 

drugs. Such laws increase health care costs and can lead to 

patient harm as uninformed patients select medicine based 

on media advertising. 

The Pharos/Autumn 2009 1

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1 Editorial 

Alpha Omega Alpha and health 

policy 

Edward D. Harris, Jr., MD 

32 

38 

The physician at the 

movies 

Slumdog Millionaire 

The Counterfeiters (Die 

Fälscher) 

Peter E. Dans, MD 

Reviews and reflections 

Ideas: A History of Thought and 

Invention, from Fire to Freud 

Reviewed by Henry N. Claman, 

MD 

Splendors and Miseries of the 

Brain: Love, Creativity, and the 

Quest for Human Happiness 

Reviewed by John C.M. Brust, 

MD 

The Orange Wire Problem and 

Other Tales from the Doctor’s 

Office 

Reviewed by Audrey Shafer, MD 

43 Letters 

60 Index 

44 

50 

63 

DEPARTMENTS ARTICLES 

AΩA NEWS "#$%&! 

2008/2009 Program 

awards 

Professionalism Fellowship 

Administrative Recognition 

Awards 

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Medical Student Service Project 

Awards 

Helen H. Glaser Student Essay 

Awards 

Volunteer Clinical Faculty 

Awards 

Alpha Omega Alpha 

members elected in 

2008/2009 

Submit a photo for the 

next “Write a Poem for 

This Photo contest” 

The power of language in medicine 

Case study: Mongolism 

Terrell Nabseth Stevenson 

! 

This is when it happens 

Steve Thomas Kirk, MD 

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War story 

The conflict in narrative- and 

evidence-based medicine 

William H. Ryan, MD 

&' 

Exposed 

Jonas Zajac Hines 

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Health Policy 

Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin 

comes to medicine—redux 

Robert H. Moser, MD 

() 

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On the cover 

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See page 25 

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POETRY 

12 

13 

I don’t know how to start 

Alan Blum, MD 

Tic Douloureux 

H. Harvey Gass, MD 

20 Betrayal 

Vaishali Gajera 

24 

31 

An Intern Begs a Suffering 

Patient for Mercy at 3 AM 

Sarah Rose Hartnett, MD 

E Unum . . . Pluribus 

Justin Yamanuha, MD 

37 Numbers 

Leah B. Rosenberg, MD 

42 

48 

The Mugging 

Joanna Pearson 

Pediatric Traumatic Injury at 

City Park, July 2008 

Christina Crumpecker 

49 Anatomy 

Cheng Tou 

The Turning Time 

Daniel C. Potts, MD 

58 

59 

64 

64 

Sunbeam egg cooker 

Satre Stuelke 

Newark or Dallas, Milan or 

Munich 

Kate Reavey 

Itinerary, 1974 

Kate Reavey 

XX Memorial 

INSIDE 

BACK 

COVER Margaret Moore 

Correction 

Last issue’s editorial stated that 

2009 is the 150th anniversary of 

the birth of Charles Darwin. It is, 

of course, the 200th anniversary. 

Thanks to the many, many readers 

who pointed that out!

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Terrell Nabseth Stevenson 

Case study: Mongolism 

The author is a member of the Class of 2011 at the 

University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. 

Medical language is prone to misnomers, since diseases 

often are named before they are completely 

understood. Once created, these names are notoriously 

difficult to change. After all, a stable, standardized 

medical language is needed for ease of communication among 

physicians; when a term is changed, that communication is 

temporarily hindered. 

Some of these medical misnomers are quite innocuous: for 

example, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, despite the name, is 

actually more common on the East Coast of the United States. 

Some are a bit more vexing: lupus anticoagulant, despite the 

name, actually causes thromboses and is not often associated 

with lupus. Still others can be quite harmful, as in the case of 

the term mongolism, once used to describe trisomy 21. This 

term in particular provides a poignant example of the power of 

physicians’ language. Words are more powerful than we might 

care to believe, and our use of a misleading term—especially 

in front of patients—perpetuates whatever strange or negative 

associations it might have. 

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The term mongolism was first coined in 1866 by a young 

London-based physician named John Langdon Down (after 

whom the condition was later named Down syndrome). To 

understand why Down chose to name the syndrome mongolism, 

it helps to look at the notion of race as it was understood 

in his time. 

Eighteenth- century Europe was no stranger to the idea 

of race or the sentiments of racism. Europeans, who were 

exposed to other populations largely through colonization, 

considered themselves superior to all non-whites. In 1795, 

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a professor at the University of 

Göttingen in Germany, created a classification system that divided 

humanity into five major groups—the Caucasian variety 

4 The Pharos/Autumn 2009

Evolution of facial features. Plate XIV. From: Haeckel E, Heinrich PA. 

Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte. Berlin: Reimer; 1870. Courtesy of the National 

Library of Medicine. 



(white Europeans), the Mongolian variety (eastern Asians), the 

Ethiopian variety (Africans), the American variety (natives 

of the New World), and the Malay variety (Pacific Islanders 

and Australian aborigines)—and ranked them hierarchically. 

Caucasians were the “most beautiful,” “ideal,” original form of 

humanity, 1 while American Indians and Orientals (along one 

pathway) and Malays and Africans (along another pathway) 

represented the “degeneration” of humanity as it moved to 

different geographic locations on the planet. 2p408 

Blumenbach’s classification system was not meant to be 

pejorative. According to Stephen Jay Gould, Blumenbach 

was the “least racist, most egalitarian, and most genial of all 

Enlightenment writers on the subject of human diversity.” 2p405 

By “degeneration,” Blumenbach was referring simply to various 

“departure[s] from an original form of humanity.” 2p407 Yet his 

ideas meshed well with the racism of the time and became an 

important influence on other racist scientific thinkers. For instance, 

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), a Swiss naturalist who immigrated 

to the United States in the 1840s, took Blumenbach’s 

ideas about the differences between races to conclude that 

the human races were actually separate species. Agassiz then 

asserted that the races could be ranked from the most superior 

species to the most inferior species, from the Caucasians 

down to the Ethiopians. He explained in an 1850 article in the 

Christian Examiner, “The indominable courageous, proud 

Indian—in how very different a light he stands by the side of 

John Langdon Down. 

Photo courtesy of the National Library of Medicine. 

Left, Down syndrome karyotype. Artwork 

based on a light micrograph of the chromosomes 

of a person affected by Down syndrome. 

© 2009 Photo Researchers, Inc. 

the submissive, obsequious, imitative negro, or by the side of 

the tricky, cunning, and cowardly Mongolian! Are not these 

facts indications that the different races do not rank upon one 

level in nature?” 3 

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John Langdon Down, a British physician who became medical 

superintendent at the Royal Earlswood Asylum for Idiots 

in 1858, was born into a society saturated with racial theory 

and bias. It is not too surprising, then, that he decided to correlate 

the residents of Earlswood asylum with particular races 

and classify them accordingly. Drawing heavily on the work 

of Blumenbach, whose papers on the five main races of the 

world had become quite popular after being translated into 

English in 1865, Down grouped the residents of the Earlswood 

Asylum into the ethnic categories of Mongolians, Americans, 

Caucasians, Malayans, and Ethiopians. “Mongolian idiots” 

made up about ten percent of the total population at the Royal 

Earlswood Asylum, and, according to Down’s observations, 

were characterized by flat, broad faces, oblique or slanted 

eyes, large lips, thick tongues, “slight dirty yellowish” skin, and 

an uncanny ability to imitate. 4pp214–15 

Down’s use of that term would come to haunt him and 


people with trisomy 21 in subsequent years; yet it is important 

to realize that Down had only the best of intentions for the 

residents of the Earlswood Asylum. He was inspired at the age 

of eighteen to work with the “feeble- minded.” While traveling 

one summer with his family, a sudden rain shower forced him 

inside a cottage where he was served by a “feeble minded” 

girl. 5p19 Down was touched by the girl and saddened by her 

situation, since she was, in the minds of most of his contemporaries, 

“placed in the category of idiots and regarded as 

Evolution of facial features. Plate XIII. 

From: Haeckel E, Heinrich PA. Naturliche 

Schopfungsgeschichte. Berlin: Reimer; 1870. 

beyond the pale of help.” 4p2 Long after attending 

the London Hospital medical school, Down continued 

to lament the treatment of children with 

mental and physical “affections,” stating in one 

of his lectures given before the Medical Society 

of London in 1887 that “Formerly no attempt was 

made to ameliorate their condition, and a Spartanlike 

policy was rife, which troubled itself only with 

the survival of the fittest.” 4p2 Down took the position 

at the Royal Earlswood Asylum for Idiots in 

an effort to change the tragic history of children 

with mental and physical “affections.” 

Down’s new term mongolism was first introduced 

to the public in his 1866 paper published 

in the London Hospital Papers entitled 

“Observations on an Ethnic Classification of 

Idiots.” The majority of the medical profession dismissed 

the idea that different types of idiocy could 

be related to different races and disagreed with the 

term mongolism because of its racist connotations 

and its medical inaccuracy. However, physicians 

continued to use the term mongolism anyway, 

and by using it, perpetuated and popularized it 

until it became extremely difficult to change. For 

example, Dr. M. Engler, a physician writing in the 

late 1940s, acknowledged at the beginning of his 

book, Mongolism: Peristatic Amentia, that the 

term mongolism was unacceptable. Elaborating 

on its racist connotations, Engler pointed out that 

the Mongolian culture was—and still is—highly 

advanced, and that some of the leading doctors 

and scientists of the day were Asian. As Dr. Engler 

asked, “Can one imagine a Japanese or Chinese 

pediatrician or psychiatrist, in a lecture to his students, 

using the expression ‘mongolian idiocy’[?]” 6 

Unfortunately, there was one particular physician who 

not only continued to use the term mongolism, but took the 

idea of an ethnic classification of idiocy even further. In 1924, 

Francis Graham Crookshank, a doctor who was not well- 

respected by his peers, 7Author’s Note managed to publish a small, 

startling book called The Mongol in Our Midst: A Study of 

Man and His Three Faces. In this work, Crookshank chided 

his fellow physicians for ignoring an anthropological theory of 

idiocy and went on to outline his own extensive version. 



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Crookshank’s book borrowed heavily from the ideas of 

German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, who introduced his theory of 

recapitulation in 1866, the same year that John Langdon Down 

coined the term mongolism. Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation 

argued that the stages of embryonic development in a given 

member of a species (ontogeny) mirrored the stages of evolutionary 

development in that species as a whole (phylogeny). 

More simply put, each ontogenetic stage in a particular human 

being, from infant to adult, represented each evolutionary 

stage of the human species, from earliest ape to modern homo 

sapien: famously, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” 12p143 

Scientists embraced Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation because 

it provided a perfect explanation for the inferior ranking of 

certain races. Mongolians, for example, who had been dismissed 

for years as inferior and “childlike,” were considered to 

be fixed at a more infantile stage in ontogenetic development 

and a correspondingly more primitive stage in evolutionary 

development. Essentially, Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation 

allowed Europeans to justify their racist beliefs in scientific 

terms: that Mongolians and other “inferior” races were more 

childish and ape-like than white Europeans. 

Building off of Down’s ethnic classification of idiocy 

and Haeckel’s idea of recapitulation, Crookshank concluded 

that man had evolved through a kind of racial hierarchy. He 

identified three main types of idiocy—the Ethiopic variety, 

Mongoloid idiocy, and Dementia Precox—and related them 

to the three main racial stages of man—the fetal Negro stage, 

the infantile Mongolian stage, and the adult Caucasian stage— 

as well as three different kinds of apes—the African ape 

(Gorilla), the Asian ape (Orangutan), and the Chimpanzee. 

In Crookshank’s system, the Mongolian race was not only 

fixed at a more infantile stage in ontogenetic development 

and a more primitive stage in evolutionary development (the 

orangutan), but it also was associated with a particular kind 

of idiocy (mongolism). 

Crookshank’s theory was based largely upon observation, 

and he provided in his book unsettling photographic spreads 

of men, apes, and idiots sitting in similar positions and exhibiting 

similar expressions. Fortunately, the medical world 

was unimpressed by Crookshank’s elaborate anthropological 

hypotheses, and his prospective term for Down syndrome, 

orangism, remained forever confined to the pages of his 

book. 7p92 However, it is somewhat unsettling to realize that 

ideas like Crookshanks’s have left some imprint on the medical 

language: one can still find the term simian crease used to 

describe the single transverse palmar crease commonly found 

on people with Down syndrome. 

Ernst Haeckel. 

Photo courtesy of the National Library of Medicine. 

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Physicians grumbled about the term mongolism for years 

after its introduction in 1866; however, it wasn’t until a full 

century later that something was finally done to change it. In 

1961, a group of physicians submitted a petition to The Lancet. 

Signed by one Japanese physician, eight American physicians, 

and nine European physicians (including John Langdon 

Down’s grandson and Jerome Lejeune, the geneticist who, in 

1959, discovered the chromosomal abnormality responsible for 

Down syndrome), this petition requested a change from the 

terms mongolism, mongoloid, and mongolian idiocy, to one of 

four new terms: Langdon-Down anomaly, Down’s syndrome/ 

anomaly, congenital acromicria, or trisomy 21 anomaly. The 

petitioners argued that the term mongolism was creating problems 

for their Asian colleagues, leading to “such ambiguous 

designations as ‘mongol Mongoloid’ ” (to describe a member 

of the Asian race who had Down syndrome) and embarrassing 

Chinese and Japanese physicians. 8 As the Lancet petition 

pointed out, physicians had known for years that “mongolism” 

had nothing to do with race: “The occurrence of this anomaly 

among Europeans and their descendants is not related to the 

segregation of genes derived from Asians.” 8p17 


In 1964, the editors of The Lancet dropped the term mongolism 

in favor of Down’s syndrome. The term mongolism 

was officially replaced by the term Down’s syndrome or Down 

syndrome in almost all major publications and textbooks by 

the mid-1970s; yet the “M-word,” as the Down’s Syndrome 

Association calls it, simply would not die out. The term 

mongolism continued to appear in various publications. Far 

worse than the occasional mention of the word mongolism 

in published works, however, was the more-than- occasional 

mention of the word by physicians. A survey completed in 

2005 by Brian Skotco, a Harvard medical student whose sister 

has Down syndrome, proved just how powerful physicians’ 

use of the term mongolism could be for families of children 

with trisomy 21. Skotco compiled the experiences of 2,945 

mothers through five different Down syndrome organizations 

and published his work in both Pediatrics and the American 

Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. According to Skotco’s 

findings, mothers who had given birth to children with Down 

syndrome in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s commonly reported 

the use of the word mongolism by their physicians. Mothers 

who had given birth to children with Down syndrome in the 

1990s only occasionally reported the term, but it was still used 

as recently as 1998. 9p71 

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There was strong evidence that physicians’ use of negative 

language affected the way mothers initially perceived and 

treated their babies with Down syndrome. In his Pediatrics 

paper, entitled “Mothers of Children with Down Syndrome 

Reflect on Their Postnatal Support,” Skotco found that “No label 

. . . seemed to be as biting as the ‘M-word’ (Mongoloid).” 9p71 

He also found that “Mothers rarely reported that the birth of 

their child with DS was a positive experience.” 9p73 Instead, 

mothers were often “frightened,” “anxious,” “shocked,” “devastated,” 

“overwhelmed,” “depressed,” and “stunned” 9p72 by the 

manner in which their physicians told them: delayed consultations 

without both parents present, often accompanied by 

derogatory language (using the terms mongolism, mongol, and 

mongoloid) and suggestions of institutionalization, adoption, 

and facial surgery. Even the mother of successful actor Chris 

Burke, star of the 1980s sitcom Life Goes On, admitted that her 

son’s birth “was the worst moment of my entire life.” 9p64 

By the 1970s, newly- formed advocacy groups were actively 

promoting the use of different terminology to describe people 

with trisomy 21—notably, people with Down syndrome (to 

emphasize the person before the disease) and Up syndrome (a 

clever play on words). Yet many physicians still used the term 

mongolism, a harmful racist term coined in 1866. We must ask 

ourselves: is there something about medicine in particular that 

makes it so difficult to get rid of harmful language? 

The answer, I believe, is yes. As linguist Dwight D. Bollinger 

stated in his book, Language: The Loaded Weapon, “For scientists 

the ‘loading’ of meaning is a special problem: they are 

often compelled to make up new words (not necessarily for 

new things) or to redefine old ones in order not to be misunderstood.” 

10 This is exactly what happened with the term 

mongolism. Coined somewhat casually by a young, passionate 

London physician, the term was loaded with a racial meaning 

that misled much of the world about the true nature of trisomy 

21. It took a full century for physicians to right this wrong and 

change the term from mongolism to Down syndrome, but by 

that point the damage most certainly had been done. 

Misleading terminology likely will continue to occur in 

medicine. However, as physicians, we can at the very least 

be aware of this problem and sensitive to the impact of our 

language on patients. Physicians’ language is powerful. It has 

the ability to do harm, as we have seen through the use of the 

term mongolism. However, it also has the power to do good. A 

hopeful word, a carefully crafted delivery of a diagnosis, even 

just a slight bit of attention to language, can better serve our 

healing purpose. 

References 

1. Blumenbach JF. The Anthropological Treatises of Johann 

Friedrich Blumenbach. Bendyshe T, editor and translator. London: 

Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green: 1865: 269. 

2. Gould SJ. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: WW Norton; 

1981. 

3. Agassiz L. The diversity of origin of the human races. Christian 

Examiner 1850; 49: 144. In Gould SJ. The Mismeasure of Man. 

New York: WW Norton; 1981: 78. 

4. Down JL. Mental Affections of Childhood and Youth: The 

Lettsomian Lectures Delivered before the Medical Society of London 

in 1887. London: J & A Churchill; 1887. 

5. Ward OC. John Langdon Down: The man and the message. 

Down Syndrome Res Pract 1999; 6: 19–24. 

6. Engler M. Mongolism (Peristatic Amentia). Baltimore: Williams 

& Wilkins; 1949: 2. 

7. Crookshank FG. The Mongol in Our Midst: The Study of 

Man and His Three Faces. New York: E.P. Dutton; 1924. 

8. Allen G, Benda CE, Carter CO, et al. “Mongolism.” Lancet 

1961; 775. In: Vollman RF, editor. Down’s Syndrome (Mongolism): A 

Reference Bibliography. Bethesda (MD): U.S. Department of Health, 

Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, National Institutes 

of Health; 1969: 17. 

9. Skotco B. Mothers of children with Down Syndrome reflect 

on their postnatal support. Pediatrics 2005; 115: 64–77. 

10. Bollinger D. Language—The Loaded Weapon: The Use and 

Abuse of Language Today. London: Longman Group Limited; 1980: 22. 

The author’s address is: 

1263 16th Avenue, Apartment 3 

San Francisco, California 94122 

E-mail: terrell.stevenson@ucsf.edu 


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Steve Thomas Kirk, MD 

The author is a senior resident in 

Neurology at Baylor College of Medicine 

in the Houston Medical Center. 

John is hooked up, some modernization 

of a marionette, to various 

parts of his ICU room, slowly becoming 

more machine than man. A 

father of five girls and a dedicated husband, 

he is a former semiprofessional 

athlete still lithe despite his medical fall 

from grace, an author, and a minister of 

a large Protestant church whose masses 

of visitors have to be rationed by the 

nursing staff. Originally he turned 

for the better after his initial cerebral 

aneurysm rupture, clipping, and allotted 

window of time for vasospasm to 

decrease, then was transferred to the 

floor and treated for aspiration pneumonia 

while awaiting further rehabilitation. 

As a senior resident member of a 

busy Neurology program, I am working 

with the primary team that rarely 

consults for other patients from our 

Neuro ICU. To the disappointment of 

my family, who wishes I would visit 

more often, it is easy to find myself 

still pushing twenty-plus hours a week 

beyond the eighty-hour workweek. But 

there is the residual code of pressure 

that covertly asks residents to spend 

whatever time is necessary to get the 

job done to prevent others from bearing 

the burden of your unfinished 

business, as if patient care can ever be 

truly finished. And there is the reward 

of experiencing people. I want to be 

a part of the human condition in a 

very available way, to see it at its most 

“pointed, dart-like, definitive,” stealing 

words from Virginia Woolf. I enjoy the 

hours, trying to finish this unfinishable 

business, of being available to experience 

the grit of the human condition in 

medicine. 

Many of the hours- beyond- allotted 

time are spent explaining specific 

neurologic damage to patients’ families, 

who come in various shifts with 

various levels of comprehension, what 

residual function to expect. We give 

them information so that important 

permutations of “what if” can be answered 

and because knowledge about 

what’s happening is a medicine in and 

of itself. But despite all the time and 

care one puts into patient care, it’s hard 

to find time to actually sit with one 

patient in the ICU, to hold his hand, to 

think about him in a personal way as 

a family member might, to stare at his 

face for a minute of silence in thoughtful 

repose. 

John was intriguing, a dynamic individual, 

and he taught me the dominoes 

game Forty-Two during free half-hours 

of the day and call, up until what I 

thought was to be the day of his discharge. 

But then he re-bled, and more 

surgery led to intraoperative complications, 

fractalizing into more systemic 

complications and a prolonged ICU 

stay, resulting in small battles won, but 

a losing war. 

My mother used to tell me about 

the death of her mother, how she was 

at her side holding her hand at that 

moment, and saw death fall about her. 

She saw the leaving of her mother in an 

intangible yet spiritual way. At her sister’s 

premature death soon thereafter, 

as well as at her father’s, she was also 

present but did not see any change. She 

wrestled from then on with the guilt of 

thinking that their deaths had seemed 

no different than an animal’s death at 

that pivotal moment, that moment, 

like the death she had seen in a fallen 

deer’s eyes at that pivotal moment the 

one and only time my father talked her 

into going hunting. She never said it 

directly, but I had the impression that 

she felt she had lost something in those 

encounters. At some level, I have always 

searched myself and my patients’ 

lives for these same intangibles. At 

some level, I think we are all curious 

about ancient and transcendent themes 

that cannot be modernized by modern 

medicine: love, joy, redemption, honor, 

guilt, betrayal, loneliness—and the moment 

of death. These appear to congeal 

often poignantly in the ICU when healing 

of the body begins to fail. 

At 2:30 am, deep into John’s hospital 

course, the nurses paged me because he 

asked for me. Multiple organs had been 

failing without recovery over the last 

few weeks, and he had failed another 

trial of extubation that morning. He 

was lined up for a tracheostomy within 

the next few days. His mind, however, 


was alive and remarkably lucid. I put 

down my delayed dinner, brushed my 

teeth, quickly combed the straight 

brown hair inherited from my mother, 

and walked over to John’s room, 

bleary-eyed within the forever fluorescent 

sunlit world of the Neuro ICU. 

He asked me on his dry- erase board 

to withdraw care. No, he didn’t want 

to wait for his family to come, or for 

me to call them; he had already said 

his goodbyes. He had fought the good 

fight, had run his race. No, he wasn’t in 

physical pain. He’d been thinking about 

his diminished state for a few days, 

how his own father had not wanted 

any machine support either. No, he 

wasn’t depressed. He loves life. But he 

loves peace more. He was competent. 

But I made his hand grow tired writing 

things down so I could stall for time. 

No, he didn’t want to talk to clergy, 

and his respirator honked and chirped 

in complaint as he attempted a feeble, 

doleful laugh. 

Silence. 

He looked at me with the saddest 

eyes I’ve ever seen, and he started to 

cry. I tried to speak optimistically, to 

convince him to wait for his daughters, 

hoping they would have heavy theological 

weapons at their disposal, feeling 

so unprepared for this situation—if 

one ever can be truly prepared. I am 

no eloquent man. I do not possess the 

wisdom to have the discussion I felt 

this man needed right now. He saw it. 

He flashed a fleeting gentle smile of the 

eyes in acknowledgment. 

“I need to tell you something, young 

man,” he wrote slowly. It was as much a 

question for permission as a statement. 

I nodded. 

“I don’t believe in God. I don’t think 

I have for awhile, but I am realizing 

it fully here.” He tried to turn away a 

bit but couldn’t. He was being selfish, 

and he knew it. His fear was palpable, 

but burdenless. He felt cowardly, but 

to me he was brave for being able to 

admit the heavy emptiness of his heart. 

He knew this was a statement beyond 

my abilities, beyond my specialty—an 

inappropriate consult. He erased the 

statement with his bed sheet sloppily, 

and scribbled half- illegibly, “I’m sorry.” 

I didn’t know how to give it back to 

him. No one ever taught me in medical 

school or residency how to restore 

someone’s sense of salvation. I was at 

a loss for words, so I just sat with him. 

I remembered an article I had read in 

a magazine in the hospital cafeteria, 

an uncharacteristically serious article 

by Steve Martin about the death of his 

father. In it he tells about a hospice 

worker who told him as he came to 

say his goodbyes to his father, “This is 

when it all happens.” 

We did not wait for John’s family 

to come in the morning. After a long 

time in silence, I gave him a hug, feeling 

more family member than doctor. I told 

him about the comfort measures and 

what I would do. He listened patiently. 

Morphine ran, lines and tubes were 

withdrawn. 

It wasn’t my first death, and hasn’t 

been the last. I was riding the line 

between stoic physician observer and 

saddened humanist. There was something 

about this man, this dynamic 

individual, he and I alone at 3:00 am in 

the Neuro ICU, the aviary of machinations 

beeping from other rooms around 

us. It was happening. The human condition. 

It felt like truth. This is as much 

all that is poignant and valuable in the 

medical profession as cure. 

At that moment, as death fell upon 

him, heavy in me like a spoonful of 

neutron star, I saw a change. A definitive 

change. I hadn’t seen it before, and 

haven’t seen it since. But one minute he 

was there, and then he, the . . . he underneath, 

was no more. It was at a very 

specific moment in time. It wasn’t a 

change of facial expression. It wasn’t a 

monitor. I don’t know why I saw it with 

him and not others. Maybe I was just 

more open to being aware of the moment, 

a combination of sleep deprivation 

and stripped-down conversations 

about God. Maybe it was and always 

will be just a piece of my imagination 

or subtle unconscious physical change 

in him that some primitive aspect of 

my brain picked up on. Maybe it was 

just the change in me. 


9831 Fitzroy 

Dallas, Texas 75238 

E-mail: sthomaskirk@gmail.com 


I don’t know how to start. 

I’ll start it this way. 

Friday coming home on the bus I felt a little dizzy, a little chill. 

I took my temperature and I had a fever. 99.2. 

It started to go up very fast to 99.4. 

I got into the bed–forget about it, I said. But then it got to 99.8. And then 100. 

But I didn’t have a cold, and I’m in the house since Friday. 

I’m sitting here, I have a chill, although it’s 85 outside. 

So I put a hot water bag on. I used a vaporizer, too. 

I know I’m making a whole to-do. 

But I had a pain in my left arm. 

And then my right arm. 

Is it possible… 

could it be cancer? 

From Seeing Patients: The Sketchiest Details by Alan Blum, MD 

From his earliest days as a medical student, Dr. Alan Blum (AΩA, Emory University, 1985), Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in Family 

Medicine at the University of Alabama, has captured thousands of patients’ stories in notes and drawings. The sketches and jottings bring back 

the essence of a conversation, a detail of personality, and the fragmentary clues patients give their doctor about the experience of illness. Dr. 

Blum’s address is: 26 Pinehurst Drive, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401-1148. E-mail: ablum@cchs.ua.edu 


Tic Douloureux 

A jerking pain in my aging face 

kept recurring in the same place, 

like a sword thrust into my head 

leaving memories recalled with dread. 

A wire, worn through raw 

short circuits at the flaw 

shooting stabs from my cheek 

where it joins my lip to peak 

in my jaw, spending out in my chin 

like a church bell’s aftertone 

or a quivering arrow shot 

into a plank, or touching a pot too hot. 

Opening my mouth to eat or talk 

will fire that piercing shock. 

My face, on guard, a featureless mask 

as if immobilized in wax. 

A spot next my nose, if touched, 

or on my gum inside brushed 

by my careless tongue, 

too late I regret the wrong. 

There were spells in spring or fall 

when leachlike it hardly quit at all, 

but when it did, as it might sometimes, 

the welcome relief was peace sublime. 

Close friends recognize the tic. 

Disguise is futile when I am sick. 

Dare I speak, I have to stop, 

my words cut off like a hatchet chop. 

Stubborn I was in my conviction 

until the dentist’s contradiction 

that extracting teeth would do no good. 

The problem was back inside my head. 

Medicine, at last, has learned the truth 

about the cause of tic douloureux. 

A blood vessel’s redundant curve 

is compressing my trigeminal nerve, 

There is no solution in capsule or pill. 

What is needed is neurosurgical skill. 

H. Harvey Gass, MD 

Dr. Gass (AΩA, University of Michigan, 1941) is retired from 

practice as a clinical professor of Neurosurgery at Wayne 

State Medical School. His address is: 6155 East Longview 

Drive, East Lansing, Michigan 48823. E-mail: sgass@msu.edu. 


War story 

The conflict in narrative- and evidence-based medicine 


Erica Aitken 

William H. Ryan, MD 

The author (AΩA, University of North Carolina School of 

Medicine, 1977) is in private practice in cardiovascular surgery 

in Dallas, Texas. The essay is dedicated to the family 

of Captain George Burnett. 

Evidence-based medicine as described by its creator 

David Sackett “deemphasizes intuition, unsystematic 

clinical experience and intuitive pathophysiologic rationale 

as sufficient grounds for clinical decision making and 

stresses the evidence from clinical research.” 1,2p224 Much of 

our evidence-based therapy in cardiovascular surgery originated 

with intuition and unsystematic treatment employed by 

its early pioneers. 

Thoracic aneurysms provide a clear example. We know 

that the larger the aneurysm, the higher the risk of rupture. 

We know that most abdominal aneurysms should be operated 

upon at a smaller size than thoracic aneurysms, and that 

calcified aneurysms are slightly less likely to rupture. Calcified 

traumatic aneurysms, for example, cause a fifteen percent mortality 

per year. 3 Unless the patient has a severe comorbidity, 

evidence-based medicine dictates operative intervention for all 

large thoracic aneurysms. 4 Most of this information originated 

from observation and operative intervention based on improving 

graft materials and surgical techniques, and the confidence 

of the surgeon the patient encountered. 5 Only in the past twenty 

years have guidelines been applied in thoracic aneurysm. The 

true picture of aneurysmal disease depends on the etiology, 

timeline of enlargement, and the point at which we encounter 

the patient. 6 Occasionally, our experience and determination to 

use the best available evidence is tested by a rare patient who 

will not go quietly along with our treatment plan. 

The story of George Burnett is a remarkable tale, as full of 

twists and turns as a Dickens novel. It is a story of bombs, flak, 

and lice, of salvation from unlikely sources, of homecoming 

heartbreak, and of the self- inflicted wounds of peacetime. It 

required a young surgeon to relearn old lessons from infectious 

disease texts and new lessons from old thoracic surgery 

articles. Most importantly, it required the reconciliation of 

surgical judgment, evidence-based medicine, and the patient’s 

narrative in a treatment strategy comfortable to both patient 

and physician. I have reconstructed George Burnett’s story 

from notes written the evening of my visit, the medical chart, 

and the military files documenting the story. What I remember 

may not be exactly what George Burnett told me, or even 

exactly what he remembered, but since he is dead and his 

family knew little of his war experience, his story is left for 

me to tell. . 

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I first met George Burnett on August 30, 1990. I was asked 

to see George to evaluate his swollen left leg damaged by 

flak and now beginning to swell from recurrent deep venous 

thrombosis. What caught my eye and interested me most, 

however, was the chest x-ray and a large calcified thoracic aneurysm 

that filled virtually the entire left chest. I was certain 

The Pharos/Autumn 2009 15 

Courtesy of the Burnett family.

War story 

that this needed an operation. Squinting over his glasses and 

across sixty years of the Great Depression, World War II, 

and Korea, George rightly sized me up as an overconfident, 

aggressive young surgeon. Judging from his reaction to my 

confident, statistic- laden medical pronouncements that any 

aneurysm over six centimeters should undergo repair, that the 

risk of rupture increased exponentially with size and time, and 

that his risk now approached fifteen percent per year, I soon 

realized he was confident that he knew better than I what he 

needed. 

I am not sure why—perhaps out of pity or perhaps because 

he recognized something of his younger self—he chose to tell 

me his story. At the time I did not feel very fortunate to receive 

this honor. There were other patients to see, charts to update, 

x-rays to review, and my birthday dinner with family waiting 

at home. What really held me there, however, was his preface 

“After you hear what I tell you, if you still want to fix my aortic 

aneurysm, then I will let you.” I sat down next to his bed and 

the patient in the next bed sat up. 

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During the latter days of World War II, Captain George 

Burnett was a twenty-four-year-old navigator of a Martin 

Marauder B-26 bomber. The B-26, designed in 1939, was a medium 

armored bomber with a crew of six or seven, including a 

pilot, bombardier, navigator, three gunners, and occasionally 

a back-up copilot. The B-26’s wingspan, cantilevered wings, 

Pratt and Whitney engines, and its specifications were so 

impressive that the Army ordered 1,100 planes without even 

testing a prototype. Early problems with low-speed maneuverability 

led to frequent crashes. Later modifications that 

included increasing the height of the rudder and the wingspan 

markedly improved low-speed handling. While early tactics 

and low- level bombing results with the plane were not impressive, 

by the time George Burnett was flying the aircraft in 

1944, conditions had improved dramatically. Bomb runs had 

been elevated to 10,000 to 15,000 feet, making ground fire less 

accurate. By the end of 1944 and in early 1945, the Luftwaffe 

had been degraded, and enemy attacks were rare. An RAF 

fighter escort to and from the target and box formations made 

Luftwaffe attack even more futile. The B-26 had the lowest 

loss rate of any World War II bomber, averaging less than half 

a percent of the entire fleet. 7 It seemed that George Burnett 

was flying the safest bomber at the safest possible time during 

the war. The only remaining threat to the bomber fleet in late 

1944 and early 1945 was flak: ground-fired shells that exploded 

at altitude. 8 

During December and January of 1944 and 1945, Hitler had 

ordered a counterattack at the center of the American and 

Captain George Burnett. Courtesy of the Burnett family. 

British lines in the Ardennes. 9 This last thrust was a desperate 

attempt to capture Antwerp, the main deep- water Allied 

supply port. Later termed the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s last 

offensive thrust of the war failed when the siege of Bastogne 

was lifted on Christmas Day. 8 On January 14, 1945, the 323 

Bomb Group, 453rd squadron was flying a mission to bomb 

German communication centers ten miles southeast of St. 

Vith, Belgium. Hitler’s fifth and sixth Panzer divisions, which 

had spearheaded the Ardennes offensive, were in the area and 

flak was heavy. 10 

The personnel arrangement in the B-26 included a bombardier 

who sat in front and below the pilot and the navigator, 

both of whom sat in steel seats partially surrounded by 

a steel canopy much like a turtle shell. Captain Burnett’s 

squadron was in a thick flak field approximately two minutes 

before bombs- away when a shell came from below and 

burst in the cockpit. The 88-mm fragment came so close to 

Captain Burnett that he felt the wind from it go by his left ear. 

Fortunately, he was leaning to the right and looking forward 

and downward so it just missed decapitating him, but it did 

sever his left thumb, which was holding a map of the area. The 

same blast badly mangled his left leg, and the flak suit he was 

wearing was completely shredded. At first nothing else seemed 

amiss, but several seconds later a fire broke out between the 

pilot’s rudder pedals, and the pilot ordered the crew to bail 

out. Captain Burnett made his way back to the bomb bay area 

and, after giving the order to bail out to the other crewmembers, 

he led the crew out of the rear doors. When he pulled his 


ipcord and the chute snapped open, it jerked him back “very 

severely.” Captain Burnett remembered swinging only several 

times before hitting trees, crashing down through branches 

and needles, and ending up thirty to forty feet high, jerking 

and swinging from his parachute. He knew at the time he was 

in enemy territory, and he was very quiet for several hours. 

From approximately 2:00 in the afternoon until after dark, 

he remained in his parachute swinging from the tree. After 

dark, however, it became sub- freezing and the wind picked 

up with blowing snow. Captain Burnett decided at that point 

that capture was his best option, particularly with his left leg 

so mangled that he could not walk. Shortly after dark, he cut 

himself out of his parachute and fell into the snow bank below. 

The fall knocked the wind out of him and he was nearly immobile. 

Captain Burnett had stopped shivering approximately 

one hour before and was now seriously hypothermic. 

Traumatic thoracic aneurysms usually result from deceleration 

injuries and a tear at the ligamentum arteriosum 

through the intima and media of the aorta, leaving the adventitia 

intact. Calculating during the story like a good surgeon, 

I noted that the three periods of deceleration in George’s fall 

were his chute opening, his stopping suddenly as the chute 

caught in the tree, and his fall into the snow below. I also knew 

that ninety percent of people with traumatic aortic tears die 

immediately. 6 Captain Burnett had survived three sequential 

deceleration insults, two of which may have been subsequent 

to the tear itself. 

Perhaps the aneurysm was not caused by deceleration 

but was a pseudoaneurysm from shrapnel fragments. I have 

looked carefully at the x-ray many times for metal fragments 

in the large calcified aneurysm and have found none. Perhaps 

the aneurysm could have been present before the war. In 2001, 

however, I received a letter from Captain Burnett’s daughter 

documenting his military x-ray findings. This is the letter written 

to the Army medical review board by Captain Burnett: 

In January of 1959 I took a routine physical examination 

in Atlanta Georgia. Dr. Chip Woodson gave the exam. He 

saw a [result] on the x-ray in my chest area and had more 

x-ray’s made by a radiologist. Then a heart specialist, Dr. 

William Hopkins of Atlanta, Ga. performed an aortogram, 

which proved that I had an aneurysm. Dr. Hopkins then 

wanted to determine how long the aneurysm had been 

there. He looked at all the x-rays that I had ever [had]. He 

obtained the x-rays from the Army and all doctors that had 

examined me since my separation from the service. The [result] 

on the x-ray (which was explained to me as a calcium 

deposit) was on all x-rays, including the 64 exam made by 

the military after I got out of German prison camp. The 

[result] was not present on the last 64 exam that was given 

to me in England just a few months before I was shot down. 

Dr. Hopkins was convinced that I got the aneurysm when I 

was shot down. 11 

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While lying in the snow, it soon became apparent that capture 

was better than freezing to death, and Captain Burnett 

began to yell as loudly as possible. Soon, two young soldiers 

appeared. They immediately began arguing and pointing to the 

downed flyer. One communicated enough for Captain Burnett 

to respond that he did not have a gun. Despite this, they continued 

to be very agitated, alternately pointing their muzzles at 

him and becoming proportionately louder with each swing of 

the gun. While the two argued, a German officer appeared. He 

walked over to Captain Burnett and, in perfect English, asked 

if he was a downed flyer. Amazed, Captain Burnett answered 

and asked where he had learned to speak English so fluently. “I 

graduated from Harvard,” was the Major’s reply. He then went 

on to explain that the two soldiers were only fifteen years old, 

had never killed a man, and were arguing about which one of 

them was going to have to kill him. They had been ordered 

to shoot on sight, the Major explained, and only the fact that 

Captain Burnett did not carry a gun had saved his life. Neither 

boy had wanted to shoot an unarmed man. 

The Major left and returned shortly with several other 

soldiers in a truck. Captain Burnett was loaded on the truck 

and shipped to POW hospital Hoffnungstal near Keeln. 10 They 

had no anesthesia, very little morphine, but a lot of schnapps. 

Captain Burnett was made to drink nearly a pint, given morphine, 

and then his leg wounds were debrided and the remains 

of his thumb amputated and sewn up. Captain Burnett 

remembers being placed with his head down for most of the 

procedure and the subsequent day. His account correlates 

well with other first- person narratives of this point in the war. 

Hitler, with most of his SS troops destroyed in the Allied push 

across France and Belgium and in the Ardennes offensive, had 

been drafting younger and younger men, especially for guard 

and support duties. There was a critical shortage of supplies, 

and with Hitler’s fight-to-the-last-man order issued late in 

1944, field hospitals and supplies were probably a rare second 

thought. 12 

After nearly two months in Hoffnungstal in fairly severe 

conditions with little food or heat, a truck pulled into camp 

and fifteen to twenty armed soldiers emerged. The Germans 

herded Captain Burnett and four other downed flyers into the 

truck and departed rapidly. George was certain they were all to 

be executed. The Major from Harvard was among the German 

guard group, however, and poked his head back through a 

window. Expecting the worst, Captain Burnett asked him why 

it took fifteen men to guard five wounded prisoners. The major 

replied, “Sir, the guns are not for you. Hoffnungstal was a 

Wehrmacht camp. We are losing the war and soon you would 

have been shot. You are an airman and you deserve a Luftwaffe 


War story 

POW camp. The guns were in case a disagreement with the 

Wehrmacht guard broke out.” George spent the rest of the war 

in Dulag-Luft West POW camp in relative comfort, free of the 

work details at the Wehrmacht POW Camp. 10 By this time I 

was less enthusiastic about taking Mr. Burnett to the operating 

room, but he was far from finished. 

Thinking he was dead, Captain Burnett’s squadron packed 

his belongings and shipped them to his home in early March 

1945. George’s father unpacked his belongings, which included 

his winter woolens, and became very distraught, crying over 

the effects and using his son’s shirts to dry his tears. On March 

15, his father became very ill with a high fever, developed 

a widespread rash, and died on March 27. 13 During those 

two weeks, he was attended by his local physician. George’s 

mother was told by the health department that her husband 

had died of European typhus and that there had been five 

deaths in America that year from European typhus, all under 

similar circumstances. The death certificate lists the cause of 

death as typhus. 

To understand what happened, later that night I reread 

my pathology text from medical school. Typhus or war fever 

is caused by Rickettsiae prowazekii, an organism neither 

bacteria nor virus, most closely resembling a mitochondrion, 

and carried by the human body louse. Biting a fever- ridden 

human infects the louse. Once the louse has ingested the 

rickettsiae, they reproduce so rapidly that they cause 

rupture of the louse. Humans become infected not by a 

louse bite but by rubbing or scratching louse remains 

into their mucous membranes or skin in response to 

other louse bites. The rickettsiae remain infectious for 

some time in dried louse remains, and cause a diffuse 

destruction of the microcirculation of the body. Once 

infected, humans experience a high fever, headaches, 

and mental confusion. After six days, red eruptions 

appear on the skin of the torso, back, feet, and face. 

18 

Rickettsia rickettsii. Science Source / Photo Researchers, Inc 

Mental confusion worsens, multiple organ failure ensues, and, 

untreated, mortality approaches one hundred percent. 

The plague of Athens in 420 B.C. during the Peloponnesian 

war was probably the first recorded typhus epidemic. A potentially 

horrific epidemic of war fever was averted in Sicily 

and Italy in 1943 through a concerted delousing campaign 

engineered by the Allies using the then miraculous compound 

DDT. 14 In the last twenty-five years, outbreaks have occurred 

in Africa, India, and China, and 40,000 cases in Burundi were 

recorded in 1996. Typhus is a disease of humans and lice; no 

other animal reservoirs are involved in the disease cycle. What 

makes the disease so dangerous, however, is that the rickettsiae 

can remain alive after the actual death of the louse and remain 

infectious in dried louse particles and feces, which were probably 

present in Captain Burnett’s effects. The agent’s stability 

and the potential for aerosol transmission have aroused 

Erica Aitken

concern about terrorist dissemination. 15 

How Captain Burnett escaped the disease that killed his father 

is the story’s greatest irony. Perhaps his clothes were contaminated 

in the months after he was shot down, or perhaps 

Captain Burnett had a subclinical infection. Although typhus 

vaccines were attempted during World War II, they were generally 

ineffective and rarely employed. 15 

A downed flyer with a torn thoracic aorta was saved from 

being shot by youth and inexperience; saved from early rupture 

by hypothermia, blood loss, and vasodilatation; and from late 

rupture and execution by his removal to a Luftwaffe POW 

camp. George’s father died of grief and a louse. When I considered 

the 0.5 percent B-26 loss rate and the ten percent survival 

rate of traumatic aortic rupture, I estimated George’s odds 

of being shot down and surviving his ordeal at less than 0.05 

percent. He had subsequently survived forty-five years with a 

fifteen percent per year mortality rate. 

Realizing that deep venous thrombosis posed the immediate 

threat to his life and was his presenting problem, I took 

the easy way out. On August 31, 1990, the day after I first 

visited with George, I placed an IVC filter in him for recurrent 

pulmonary emboli from his shrapnel- injured leg. He was 

not treated with Coumadin at that time due to fear that his 

calcified thoracic aneurysm might bleed. He did well and was 

discharged two days later. 

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Why, after hearing Captain George Burnett’s story, did I 

abandon my initial enthusiasm to repair his aneurysm? As 

Trisha Greenhalgh points out, “The dissonance we experience 

when trying to apply research findings to the clinical encounter 

often occurs when we abandon the narrative- interpretive paradigm 

and try to get by on ‘evidence’ alone.” 16 The heroic part of 

George Burnett’s life occurred long before my feeble attempt at 

“heroic” intervention based solely on evidence-based medicine. 

Perhaps these are times when we should stand quietly and 

observe the flow of time and the natural history of an illness in 

a patient’s life as reflected in the stories that we are privileged 

to hear. Perhaps these are times when we should only do small 

things that will make patients for a time less mortal. Perhaps 

that day I realized that mortality is always relative in medicine 

and that for a brief time in January 1945, Captain George 

Burnett beat all the odds and touched immortality. 

George retired as a captain in the Army Air Corps. He received 

the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, and the 

Purple Heart. His children remember him as a good man, a 

good father, and a strict disciplinarian. He began a long battle 

with alcohol on learning of his father’s death, and although his 

marriage did not ultimately survive this, his ex-wife and their 

children remained close. Seven years after he saw me, George 

had a right hemisphere stroke and was confined to a skilled 

nursing facility for a time but recovered well enough to live 

near his family in Austin. Ten years after George told me his 

story and fifty-five years after tearing his aorta, at age eighty he 

developed pneumonia and died quietly at home. He is buried 

in the military cemetery in Austin, Texas, where most of his 

family lives. He never underwent aneurysm repair. 

References 

1. Evidence-Based Medicine Working Group. Evidence-based 

medicine: A new approach to the teaching of medicine. JAMA 1992; 

268: 2420–25. 

2. Weinberg SL. Evidence-based medicine revisited. Am Heart 

Hosp J 2005; 4: 224–26. 

3. Finkelmeier BA, Mentzer RM, Kaiser DL, et al. Chronic 

traumatic thoracic aneurysm. Influence of operative treatment on 

natural History: An analysis of reported cases, 1950–1980. J Thorac 

Cardiovasc Surg 1982; 84: 257–66. 

4. Fleming AW, Green DC. Traumatic aneurysms of the 

thoracic aorta: Report of 43 patients. Ann Thorac Surg 1974; 18: 

91–101. 

5. McCollum CH, Graham JM, Noon GP, DeBakey ME. Chronic 

traumatic aneurysms of the thoracic aorta: An analysis of 50 patients. 

J Trauma 1979; 19: 248–52. 

6. Bennett DE, Cherry JK. The natural history of traumatic 

aneurysms of the aorta. Surgery 1967; 61: 516–23. 

7. B-26G Maurauder. www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/planes/ 

b26.html. Access 2009 Jun 11. 

8. Keegan J. The Second World War. New York: Penguin 

Books; 1989. 

9. Churchill WS and the editor of Life. The Second World War. 

New York: Houghton Mifflin; 1959. 

10. Missing Air Crew Report 11926. War Department Headquarters. 

Army Air Force. Washington, D.C. AFHSO Research. 1945 Jan 20. 

11. Burnett GP Jr. Personal account regarding reopening of disability 

claim with the Veterans Health Administration. 1986 Aug 1. 

12. Blount RC Jr. Foot Soldier: A Combat Infantryman’s War in 

Europe. Cambridge (MA); Da Capo Press; 1994. 

13. Personal correspondence with Edwin Fowler, Data Management, 

Center for Health Statistics, Texas Department of State 

Health Services, Austin, Texas. 2008 Sep 16. 

14. Typhus Disease Profile. Typhus. entomology.montana.edu/ 

historybug/tyhpus.htm. Access 2009 Jun 11. 

15. Raoult D, Woodward T, Dumler JS. The history of epidemic 

typhus. Infec Dis Clin N Am 2004; 18: 127–40. 

16. Greenhalgh T. Narrative based Medicine in an evidence 

based world. BMJ 1999; 318: 323–25. 


4646 Kelsey Road 

Dallas, Texas 75229 

E-mail: whryanmd@yahoo.com 


20 

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One corner 

One propped door 

Make an enclosed triangular niche 

created by the tiny body nestled within, recuperating 

with a Sponge-Bob battle scar adorning his arm. 

Broadcasting muffled hiccuping sobs. 

Not trapped. But protected. Safe 

from mom’s ultimate duplicity 

in the ultimate hour of need. 

His first “big boy” shot. 

Vaishali Gajera 

Ms. Gajera is a member of the Class of 2011 at the Florida State 

University College of Medicine. This poem won honorable mention 

in the 2009 Pharos Poetry Competition. The author’s address is: 2105 

Chestnut Forest Drive, Tampa, Florida 33618. E-mail: vjg07@med.fsu.edu. 

Illustration by Laura Aitken.

Exp sed 

Jonas Zajac Hines 

The author (AΩA, University of New 

Mexico, 2008) is a member of the 

Class of 2010 at the University of New 

Mexico School of Medicine. 

It’s late. No, it’s early. I’ve just finished 

dictating a history and physical 

for the patient I admitted earlier 

this evening. It’s my fourth year of medical 

school and, beginning with an acting 

internship in the ICU, I hit the ground 

running. Tonight is my first time on 

overnight call and this is my first experiment 

with dictating, rather than 

writing, an H&P. I glow with the responsibilities 

newly entrusted to me. 

Walking down the ICU hallway, 

I can see Matt and Jorge, the on-call 

residents, at the doctor’s station, 

intently working at 

their computers. I ask, 

“Is there anything else 

I can do?”—med student 

code for, “Can I 

go to sleep, please?” 

Matt, the senior resident, 

looks up; his eyes 

are bloodshot. “You’ve 

done well today,” he says. 

Unlike me, he’ll be doing 

paperwork all night, which 

strikes me as one of the biggest 

transitions I’ll have to 

make into residency. “Why 

don’t you catch a few 

hours before morning 


Exposed 

rounds?” I thank them and hurry off. 

In an alcove at the end of the hallway 

are the call rooms, where the doctors 

and students on call theoretically come 

to catch a few hours of sleep. But I 

imagine it’s predominantly med students 

that use the rooms. Placing my 

magnetic badge up to the sensor, click, 

the door unlocks. I walk in. The call 

suite looks like a college quad—a small 

hallway connects three small rooms 

with a shared bathroom, linoleum floors 

throughout. There are no other students 

on call, and I just left Matt and Jorge, 

so tonight I can have my pick; I choose 

the first. Click. It’s fairly cozy in here— 

there’s a lamp, a couple of drawers, a 

computer, and a micro- refrigerator. 

I’m feeling pretty positive about 

myself now. Earlier this evening I impressed 

Matt, and myself, when I successfully 

tapped a patient’s spinal fluid 

on the first attempt. It only took me an 

hour—I was told it would take at least 

two—to dictate the H&P for my patient. 

And to think I was nervous about how 

this rite, really an initiation of sorts, 

would go! 

Sitting down on the plastic covered 

mattress, my primary focus is getting 

comfortable, which means getting out 

of these scrubs. Shoes, socks, scrubs, 

and t-shirt all come off; just underpants 

now. Just in case, I strategically lay my 

clothes across the floor, figuring that, 

if there is a code, I’ll save time getting 

dressed so as to arrive in time to get 

out of the way. I slip under the sheet—it 

feels good to lie down. 

But that feeling quickly subsides. 

The thermostat must be set five degrees 

cooler than the forecasted low—I’ll have 

to get another blanket if I’m ever going 

to get some sleep. Luckily a surplus of 

clean linens is one of the few guarantees 

in a hospital. I’ll just grab a blanket from 

the stack I saw in the hallway. 

Click. 

Somewhere in my head, a needle 

scratches across a record. I am standing 

in the hallway of the call suite, extra 

blanket in hand, wearing nothing but 

underpants. I am on the wrong side of 

a locked door. 

In disbelief, I violently tug the door 

handle. Is this a bad dream? This isn’t 

real—I’m an actor on one of those ridiculous 

TV programs about attractive, 

promiscuous, prodigy doctors, 

and the commercial break is coming 

right up. I begin to perspire. Why does 

each individual room need its own 

*@^!&# lock? My heart is racing. If 

this electronically- locked 400-pound 

door opens, I promise to spend more 

of my scarce free time with my family. 

My stomach is filled with lead. There 

goes my life—I will never live this one 

down. My extremities are icicles. Get 

a grip, Jonas. You are locked out of the 

call room, standing here in the hallway 

in your underpants and there’s no way 

you’re getting back in there without 

some help. But first, I need something 

to cover my body. 

Hanging on hooks in the hallway are 


several full-length white coats belonging 

to doctors who have already gone 

home. But even in my naked desperation 

I know I can’t possibly put one on. 

Full-length white coats are worn by real 

doctors—students have to wear short 

ones. By putting on a long coat, not 

only would I be feigning a higher level 

of knowledge and responsibility, but, 

even worse, nobody would even be able 

to tell I am wearing underpants. I’ll look 

completely naked! It simply won’t work. 

There are a few cabinets in the hallway. 

Scurrying through, they appear 

empty, except—salvation!—a worn-out 

navy blue sweatshirt. Now I’m getting 

somewhere. I’ll just wrap this blanket 

around me so . . . put the sweatshirt 

over it . . . voila! frat boy on his way to 

a toga party in Buffalo in the dead of 

winter. 

Peeking my head into the ICU hallway, 

I can see Matt’s reflection off the 

glass walls of the patients’ rooms. He’s 

still working at the computer where I 

left him only moments ago. Do I yell 

out his name? No, definitely not. I don’t 

want to alarm the staff or patients. 

Remember, this is the ICU—surely everyone 

will think a patient is coding. 

Deliverance comes, as it so often 

does for med students, in the form of 

a nurse. Charting a patient’s vital signs, 

she’s probably within speaking range. 

“Excuse me, there?” my voice cracks. 

Nothing. Again, “Excuse me, uh, pardon 

me, ma’am?” Still nothing. Oh, how I 

wish I’d learned her name earlier in 

the evening! A little louder, “Hi, there, 

over here. Thanks. Hi. Can I ask you a 

favor? Thanks. Could you get Matt for 

me? Could you ask him to come over? 

Thanks!” She frowns, looks suspicious, 

then confused, mildly annoyed . . . possibly 

even amused? This is progress. I 

try out my voice once more, blurting, 

“I locked myself out of my room, could 

you grab Matt, please?” 

She stops her work and walks over 

to Matt, a slight grin on her face. In the 

reflection off the glass wall, I can see 

her speaking to him. Hesitating for a 

moment, he stops his work. He gets up 

and walks down the hallway toward the 

alcove. 

Trying to brush past my appearance, 

I blast, “MATT, THANKS! I locked myself 

out of my . . .” 

“Wait, you don’t have any pants on!?” 

He unlocks the door, chuckling to 

himself as he turns away. After I put my 

scrubs back on, I turn out the lights and 

climb under my blankets, beginning to 

feel warm. I know that this story is going 

to spread like a wildfire, but at least 

I am back in my room now. 

Staring at the ceiling, I reflect on 

what can be learned from this experience: 

I must always sleep in my clothes. 

Yes. I must try to be mindful of seemingly 

insignificant details and, when 

I am in trouble, never be too prideful 

not seek assistance. Definitely. 

And perhaps most importantly, 

I should never take myself too 

seriously. My eyelids feel heavy. 

As I drift off to sleep, I am certain 

of what I will dream tonight—a 

nightmare in which I am standing 

naked, exposed, in front of all my 

peers. 


301 Tulane SE 

Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106 

E-mail: jonaszajac@gmail.com 


!"#$"%&'"#(&)*#+#,-..&'/")#0+%/&"%#.1'#2&'34#+%#5#!" 

Don’t ask my soul to share the pain 

Your eyes are showing mine. 

I am not strong or kind or wise, 

Not this late at night. 

Don’t search my face for answers; 

What have I got to give? 

I’m scared and lost and lonely too, 

In a fight I will not win. 

Not pain, not fear, not even death, 

Nothing so easily overcome. 

No, I struggle to save… 

… a piece of self 

In a psyche overrun. 

Don’t ask my soul to hold this pain 

Your eyes are showing mine. 

This hollow shell is all filled up, 

With tears I can not cry. 

Step out of my head and away from my heart, 

Let me make it through this night 

Just keep your humanity to yourself— 

I’ll not burden you with mine. 

Sarah Rose Hartnett, MD 

Dr. Hartnett graduated from the Uniformed Services University of the Health 

Sciences in 2008 and is attending a pediatrics residency at the Janet Weis 

Children’s Hospital of the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pennsylvania. This 

24 poem won an honorable mention in the 2008 Pharos Poetry Competition. Dr. 

The Pharos/Winter 2008 

Hartnett’s address is: 17 Maple Street, Danville, Pennsylvania 17821. Erica Aitken

Welcome to our new health policy section 

Alpha Omega Alpha’s strong commitment to the practice of medicine, medical education, 

humanism, service, and professionalism brings with it a responsibility to be 

involved in the discussion of issues affecting the practice of medicine in the United States 

today. 

We are soliciting original essays on topics in health care policy and other pressing national 

health care issues for publication in this new section of The Pharos. Essays should 

be scholarly, well-referenced discourses that include the background and suggested approaches 

to solving problems confronting the nation’s health care system. All essays will be 

subject to peer review. Essays published will convey the views of the author(s) and are not 

those of the board of directors of Alpha Omega Alpha. 

Dr. John Kastor, MD, professor of Medicine at the University 

of Maryland School of Medicine and medical governance and 

organization consultant, will be the editor of this section. Dr. 

Kastor and the board of directors of AΩA welcome your contributions, 

comments, and critiques of the essays we will be 

publishing. 

The first essay in this series, written by Dr. Robert H. Moser, 

was originally published in Autumn 1999. Dr. Moser graciously 

updated it for this issue. 


Health policy 

Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin 

comes to medicine—redux 

Robert H. Moser, MD 

The author (AΩA, Georgetown University, 1969) is a member 

of the editorial board of The Pharos. 

All the recent roilings and rumblings about the hospitalist 

movement prompt recollection of a biblical 

aphorism; the “writing that was written” on the wall 

of Belshazzar’s banqueting hall (Daniel 5:1–31*) has become 

ever more evident. Having observed the evolution of our discipline 

for over five decades, I am joining the ever- growing 

legion of speculators mulling the future of our noble but embattled 

calling. I don’t love all that I think will happen, but I 

am optimistic that ultimately a better system of medical care 

will emerge. 

Universal health care—structure and function 

Within the next ten years we will take “The Big Step” and 

* Daniel 5:1–31: Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a 

thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. . . . In 

the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over 

against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s 

palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the 

king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, 

so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one 

against another. . . . And this is the writing that was written, MENE, 

MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: 

MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; 

thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES: 

Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. . . . 

In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And 

Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and 

two years old. 

adopt a Universal Health Care System (UHCS). Progress will 

be incremental. But each stage will be iconoclastic by contemporary 

standards. Outpatient care will be delivered by 

primary care providers (PCPs) and specialty clinics. These 

PCP teams will consist of an amalgam of nurse practitioners, 

nurse midwives, and physician assistants, who may or may 

not work under the supervision of a primary care internist, a 

family physician, or osteopathic physician. The physician will 

become the captain of the PCP (outpatient) team. Over time, 

the distinction between MD, DO, RN, and PA will blur and 

diminish. They all will be PCPs. Their training will be consolidated, 

standardized, and conducted by academic health 

centers (AHCs), and tailored to the needs of ambulatory medicine. 

It may even be further refined to meet specific requirements 

of PCPs in rural or inner city environments. Students 

desiring to become team leaders or to continue beyond medical 

school into residency training will have a separate curriculum 

pathway or additional year of medical school. 

In the early years, teams of nonphysicians/PCPs working 

in underserved areas will function in virtual autonomy. They 

will follow diagnostic and treatment protocols (algorithms) 

based on the latest evidence-based information. Such data 

will be periodically refined, updated, and modified to ensure 

that the guidelines remain appropriate and adaptable 

for implementation at the local level. This will help ensure 

reasonably uniform quality of care across the country, in 

contrast to the current irrational regional variations in cost 

and quality. For clinical problems that cannot be resolved 

by a specific protocol, PCPs will have real-time interactive 

telecommunications capability that will be part of the na- 


tional electronic medical records system (EMRS) with on-call 

hospitalist- specialists at a previously designated academic 

health center or other regional Center of Excellence nearby. 

Performance of PCPs will be evaluated by periodic random 

review of records that look for reasonable compliance with 

established protocols coupled with assessment of patient satisfaction 

that takes into consideration patients’ personal views 

on the impact of overall management on their quality of life. 

This review will be accomplished by teams of other PCPs who 

will rotate for a month or six weeks away from their regular 

assignments. Excellence in performance will be rewarded 

with yearly bonuses for PCPs and hospitalists. 

Evaluation will become the responsibility of a beefedup 

Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), 

which will exist under the umbrella of UHCS and assess the 

quality of care being delivered by all AHCs and their satellite 

facilities, including clinics and isolated health care providers. 

It will ensure that all diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms 

are indeed evidence-based, clearly written, and updated 

when new data become available. 

These algorithms will be regarded as guidelines, not rigid 

dictums. AHRQ evaluation will not insist on blind adherence 

to the algorithm, but will allow rational, reasonable variations 

within the guidelines to incorporate individual patient 

characteristics ( socioeconomic status, age, emotional stability 

and reliability, environmental circumstances) whenever 

possible. Greater emphasis will be placed on long-term outcomes 

and patient quality-of-life satisfaction. Such practices 

will return some of the art to the practice of medicine. 

Repeated failure of individual PCPs to meet established 

standards will result in appropriate disciplinary action, up to 

and including license suspension. A similar mechanism will 

be established for hospitalists representing all specialties and 

subspecialties. 

All hospital inpatient care will be conducted by general 

internists and specialists (the former will become hospitalistgeneralists 

and the various subspecialists will become 

hospitalist- specialists). These will include intensive care, 

all medical and surgical subspecialities, and every other 

specialized branch of medicine. Initial management will be 

conducted by hospitalistgeneralists, who will triage consultations 

and referrals when indicated. All hospitalists will be 

salaried employees of their institutions; their incomes will 

not depend on how many patients they see or their dollar 

“productivity.” The Single Payer Program (SPP), the financial 

arm of the UHCS, will negotiate and establish salaries and 

bonuses based on mutually- accepted criteria. 

PCPs will be encouraged to look in on their admitted 

patients and provide the hospitalist-generalists with insight 

about important aspects of the nature of the patient’s previous 

management, socioeconomic status, personality, or expressed 

desires (for example, diagnostic and therapeutic preferences, 

concepts of quality of life, end-of-life desires, etc.). 

The financial picture 

The UHCS will begin as an extension of a modified and 

vastly expanded Medicare system. Under UHCS, every citizen 

and legal immigrant will be eligible for coverage (universal 

capitation) by a payroll deduction increase in current 

FICA levies, and a system of copayments, adjusted through 

a realistic means- testing formula. Illegal immigrants will be 

served for emergencies but denied any long-term care. Their 

children will receive full coverage. 

All finances will be controlled by the UHCS via the SPP. 

This will include AHCs, their satellites, and peripheral PCPs. 

The UHCS will begin as part of the U.S. Department of 

Health and Human Services, but will rapidly outgrow its parent. 

The AHRQ will also come under the umbrella of UHCS. 

All AHCs and their satellite facilities will submit annual 

budgets. This is the way the VA and military hospitals 

operate today. Budgets will be based on true costs, without 

plugging in a profit margin, since all salaries and operating 

expenses will be known. An MRI or an aspirin will cost the 

same in Boston and Lubbock. The current avalanche of paperwork 

and personnel time devoted to billing (seeking payment 

from patients, endless negotiation with insurers) will 

be significantly reduced. Operating costs will thus be lower. 

Problems solved by implementing UHCS 

Shortly after the initial launch of UHCS, it will become 

cost effective. The underlying premise will be an effort to 

reduce or even eliminate “profit” from the health care equation. 

(It is my naïve belief that health care is such a primal 

aspect of life that it should never be subjected to the vicissitudes 

of cost considerations or excessive profit making in 

a modern, civilized society.) Unfortunately, some few physicians 

seek wealth from illness by ordering excessive and unnecessary 

procedures. A handful of these have managed to 

game the system even further by setting up their own diagnostic 

laboratories, home health care facilities, and “health” 

spas. They route their patients to these areas, from which 

they derive income. Of course, there will always be outliers 

to the UHCS. Some wealthy citizens may well opt for “boutique” 

care —delivered by entrepreneurial physicians. 

On the other hand, some health care providers, in today’s 

litigious climate, are tempted to overprescribe medications 

and order excessive laboratory procedures “just in case.” I 

hope that in the future litigation will be tempered by having 

all potential suits submitted to legally- binding arbitration by a 

local committee composed of a team of impartial health care 

providers, lawyers, and a judge. Such a body would be legally 

empowered to decide whether compensation, punitive action, 

or no action is justified. The “defendants” would be the 

individual health care provider(s) and the UHCS (if the health 

care provider is working under the UHCS). Premiums for 

malpractice insurance should then decline significantly. Those 

outside the system will deal with litigation as in the past. 


Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin comes to medicine—redux 

I assume that in this era of tort reform the dreadful economic 

burden of futile care for terminal vegetative patients 

will be eliminated. Hospital ethics committees will facilitate 

decision making on these sad cases. Hospice care will be encouraged. 

I hope we will return to an environment in which medical 

decisions are predicated on solid, evidence-based indications 

and “cost” to the patient will not be a factor (this milieu 

prevails in VA and military hospitals today). “Therapeutic 

failures” arising from patients being unable to purchase 

medication, and cases of the poor elderly faced with buying 

either food or drugs will cease. 

Pharmaceutical companies—a problem 

It seems logical to assume that, over time, the pharmacology 

departments of AHCs could assume a much greater 

role in new drug development, now largely the province of 

commercial pharmaceutical companies. Why not? Much of 

the early work is already done in AHC pharmacology departments 

and most of the creative pharmacologists in industry 

learned their trade in academia. The individual or the team 

that creates the new drug will be rewarded with bonuses in 

addition to their existing salaries. Such a system already exists 

in enterprises such as Microsoft and Bell Laboratories, 

among others. 

Clinical testing is already being done in AHCs and their 

affiliates. Pharmaceutical companies have no direct access to 

patients. Once the new drug is proved to be safe and effective 

(and approved by the FDA), commercial production can 

be farmed out to pharmaceutical companies. The AHCs will 

have no role in commercial production. Of course, for the 

foreseeable future new drug development will come from industry. 

The time will come when the pricing of all drugs will 

fall under a consortium of the initiating industry, the UHCS, 

and if the drug was created in the pharmacology department 

of an AHC the latter would be included. If the drug came 

from the pharmaceutical industry, price negotiations would 

be direct between industry and AHCS. This environment 

would discourage the creation of “me too” drugs. 

Such a structure would result in a fair and reasonable cost 

of drugs because there would no longer be a need for commercial 

advertising. The stunning amounts now deployed to 

pay “detail men” to convince health care professionals to use 

a specific drug, the giving of trinket gifts, food, or vacations, 

and the massive public advertising campaigns on television 

and in print should be reduced significantly, shrinking the 

cost of drugs. 

Information about new agents or improved old drugs will 

appear in the medical literature in dedicated sections. There 

will be more frequent publication of newsletters such as The 

Medical Letter, which the UHCS will distribute free to all 

health care professionals. A vital UHCS “drug information” 

web site will be updated weekly. 

The role of the academic health center 

Under the UHCS, AHCs would become the focal point of 

all health care delivery and illness prevention. They would 

be given the manpower and finances to ensure the highest 

quality of care in all institutions within their designated geographical 

area. These would include private hospitals, community 

hospitals, clinics, VA centers, and military hospitals. 

Some institutions may elect to remain independent of the 

UHCS. This will be their prerogative. 

Since all research and clinical faculty will be salaried, 

they will no longer be obliged to divert excessive time from 

clinical research and teaching to income- producing direct 

patient care. 

Such innovation will require a revolutionary revision in 

current organizational arrangements and our philosophic 

approach to medicine. Over time, the system would be expanded 

and refined to ensure fair allocation of resources and 

mutually beneficial cooperation between institutions. In the 

final configuration, the AHCs would bear ultimate responsibility 

to ensure the quality of care, employing the expertise of 

the AHRQ. 

The AHCs would be subsidized completely under the SPP 

of the UHCS. In addition, the current disproportions in income 

among health care providers will be largely eliminated. 

Since all will be salaried, no longer will some physicians receive 

excessive incomes while others are barely adequate. VA 

and military hospitals, as well as the Mayo Clinic operate under 

this model and prove that this payment system works. In 

addition, the pay scale for nonphysician health care providers 

will be increased reasonably. 

Until such time as a UHCS becomes fully operational, 

pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturers (and 

perhaps any other commercial enterprises that profit from patient 

care activities) would be obligated, by law, to tithe a percentage 

of their profit to the SPP to help subsidize the UHCS. 

Electronic medical record systems (EMRS) 

One by- product of the new system would be a resurrection 

of bedside teaching rounds, with renewed emphasis on 

integrating the patient into the dialogue. One member of 

the rounding team will carry an iPhone or laptop that will 

be plugged into the EMRS. This will enable access to: (1) 

complete patient information at the bedside, (2) medical information 

systems, and (3) computerized prescribing order 

entry (CPOE), thus facilitating data entry at the bedside and 

helping to prevent medication errors. Of course CPOE will 

be available for all drug prescribers. In addition, we will have 

real-time bedside access to other visual diagnostic aids, such 

as scans, radiographs, and electrocardiograms. 

EMRS will be an integral part of the UHCS. 

Implementation will be augmented by grants (from UHCS) 

to all health care providers (hospitals, clinics, practitioners). 

Any patient participating in the UHCS will be obliged to 


agree to have his/her records available. Confidentiality will 

always be a problem, but less so with a thoughtfully constructed 

access mechanism. If one opts out of UHCS, and 

wishes to go “private,” records will remain confidential. 

The care of the patient 

Rounds will be enhanced by the presence of a clinical psychologist 

and pharmacist to sharpen appropriate discussions 

into psychological and pharmaceutical aspects of management. 

Patients will be kept apprised, in clear and straightforward 

language, of discussions regarding their care. Sensitivity 

and discretion will be the watchwords governing all bedside 

encounters. The overall impact of teaching rounds will be 

positive for patients: they will always feel that their medical 

problems are receiving input from knowledgeable, sympathetic 

professionals. 

Periodically, the AHRQ, operating as an arm of the UHCS, 

will conduct epidemiological surveys and evaluations to determine 

the clinical and economic effectiveness of satellite 

hospitals and clinics operating under the aegis of their responsible 

AHCs, They will focus on management of specific 

medical problems. It is well known that hospitals (and physicians) 

with greater experience in specific areas (for example, 

coronary artery bypass surgery or organ transplantation), 

operating in so-called Centers of Excellence (CEs) produce 

outcomes considerably better than those with less experience. 

Therefore, over time there will be a concentration of specific 

referrals to CEs within geographic proximity to the referral 

source, based on these carefully evaluated performance 

reviews. The intention will be to reduce duplication and 

redundancy of procedures. Transport from peripheral hospitals 

or outpatient facilities to the nearest CE that provides 

the specific service required will become part of an extensive 

medical transportation network. This will be a function of the 

UCHS, operating at no expense to the patient. With longer 

experience, demographic and geographical factors will determine 

the location of effective CE facilities central to referral 

sites. Others will be phased out. Most CEs will be university 

hospitals or comparable facilities. 

I hope that within a few years medical care will be viewed 

as a commodity (as are fuel, food, and housing), In addition, 

the UHCS will seek to eliminate the financial disincentives 

that have helped undermine the moral imperatives of many 

managed care plans and some practicing physicians. There will 

be no financial incentive for PCPs or hospitalistgeneralists to 

avoid referring patients for appropriate hospitalist- specialist 

care. For those within the UHCS there will be no financial 

temptation to route patients to physician-owned treatment or 

diagnostic facilities. Under the UHCS, health care providers 

will not be allowed to own such facilities. Those outside the 

system will continue to do as they wish. 

Finally, “alternative medicine” practitioners will be compelled 

by the UHCS to compete with scientific medicine by 

requiring solid evidence of acceptable long-term outcomes 

and patient satisfaction. A major program of public education 

(utilizing every media channel) will be undertaken to 

increase the overall level of “scientific literacy” in the country. 

The UHCS will insist on appropriate scientific education, 

emphasizing realistic “self help” (preventive) health habits, 

beginning in grammar school and becoming part of every 

secondary school curriculum. This will include teaching of 

rational diet practices, the virtue of regular “fun” exercise, 

and avoidance of tobacco and alcohol excess. 

A determined effort to forestall the politicization of medical 

care by special interest groups will be undertaken. Under 

the new UHCS program, characterized by reasonable access 

for all and uniform quality of thoughtful, scientifically-based 

care in every part of the country, patients will no longer feel 

“medically disenfranchised” or neglected. They will no longer 

feel obliged to seek kindness and listening time outside the 

mainstream. 

Challenges 

Predictably there will be a period of chaos before this universal 

healthcare “nirvana” is achieved. There may well be a 

long interval during which patients continue to invoke their 

“freedom of choice” to select health care providers. This 

could turn the current “agora of medical care” into a turbulent, 

expensive marketplace, indeed. There is already reimbursement 

for chiropractic, naturopathy, and acupuncture 

in many states. The ultimate perversion of this situation will 

see herbalists and homeopaths competing with primary care 

practitioners, chiropractors openly challenging orthopedists 

and physiatrists, crystal gazers taking on psychologists and 

psychiatrists, and acupuncturists competing with all physicians. 

Of course, to a certain extent this is happening now, 

but when public and political pressure forces the UHCS into 

reality, pragmatic survival will become the name of the game. 

Over time, hard-nosed empiricism will win the day (what 

works will survive, what doesn’t will be discarded), or the imminent 

bankruptcy of the current system of profligate reimbursement 

or a much higher level of medical literacy attained 

by the public will cause pretenders to fade from the scene. 

I am not sure which factor will dominate, or if there will be 

some felicitous synergy. I did not include scientific veracity 

among my criteria for the ultimate failure of nonscientific 

medicine. This is because many contemporary consumers of 

medical care believe they are sufficiently medically knowledgeable 

(many through exposure to the checkered information 

available on the Internet) to make educated choices. 

They are on thin ice. 

I would like to believe that a more medically literate and 

sophisticated public will be our ultimate salvation, but I am 

far from sanguine. In darker moments, I suspect the return 

to rationality will turn on tough, practical outcomes: the happiness 

(or unhappiness) of patients with the prevailing non- 


Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin comes to medicine—redux 

system, or down and dirty economic necessity rather than 

the clear virtue of sound medical science. 

Another related problem threatens the future of American 

medicine: the alarming decline of physician investigators 

committed to basic or clinical research. According to the 

Association for Patient Oriented Research, the number of 

first-time applications by physicians for National Institutes 

of Health (NIH) research grants plummeted thirty percent 

between 1994 and 1997. This pattern continues today. Some 

cynics say we should leave the field of medical research to 

those with doctorates in basic sciences. I think not. This 

would certainly widen the already existing breach between 

bed and bench. So why are fewer physicians selecting careers 

in research? Economic disincentives lead the pack: the enormous 

debt burden of most medical graduates and the modest 

stipends of postdoctoral trainees. 

There exists a solution. We must expand, revitalize, and 

reorient the National Health Service Corps (NHSC). To a 

certain extent this is occurring, but it is too circumscribed 

and underfinanced. NHSC affords bright but poor students 

(especially minorities) the opportunity to come into 

medicine without incurring debilitating debt. I feel such an 

infusion of fresh blood could provide the same tide of intellectual 

and spiritual revitalization that we see when eager 

new immigrant populations enter the country. In addition 

the NHCS should be made available to all health care practitioners 

(osteopathic physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, 

physician assistants, nurse midwives). Medical school curricula 

will have to be modified extensively to accommodate 

these new PCPs. 

The major change in NHCS will occur when the time 

comes for their repayment (after the medical school or 

postgraduate training years)—they will not have the option 

of “buying out.” That defeats the purpose and spirit of the 

NHSC. These new physicians (or PCPs, or perhaps even 

some hospitalistgeneralists and hospitalist- specialists) will 

be assigned to underserved areas for a time determined by 

level of indebtedness (years in residency training) at the discretion 

of the NHCS. Those who demonstrate a talent and 

desire to do research will be allowed to repay some or all 

of their time by conducting postdoctoral bench research or 

clinical investigation. NIH study sections will be required to 

revise the philosophy of their granting process, to acknowledge 

the critical importance of patient- oriented investigation. 

Thus, the revitalized NHCS program would provide 

at least partial solutions to two vexing problems: acquiring 

health care providers for underserved areas, and encouraging 

more physicians to consider careers in medical research. 

Admittedly, this is a cheeky, bare bones (I will even concede, 

simplistic) sketch of what I believe many aspects of the 

ultimate system will look like. I am convinced that the many 

devils in the details can be worked out by thoughtful people, 

representing different disciplines in and out of medicine, 

who will be seeking a mechanism to devise a workable UHCS 

to ensure optimal care at a reasonable cost. We certainly can 

learn from the strengths and weaknesses of other Western 

countries. If this pie in the sky dream plan seems to have 

Orwellian overtones, it need not. The transition will be tumultuous 

and the inevitable bureaucracy must be anticipated 

and contained. But it should be far less turbulent than exists 

today in the prevailing nonsystem. 

The opposition by special interest groups will be formidable, 

but we are forced to the grim realization that we stand 

on the brink of chaos. Perhaps the magic number will be 150 

million people without adequate health care before we are 

willing to accept the seismic changes the system demands. 

Prognosis 

Medicine will always be conducted on a human to human 

basis. But, to acknowledge the hard facts, over the years 

most of us in medicine became complacent; in many areas 

we lacked discipline and some few of us became downright 

greedy. In our zeal to leave no stone unturned on behalf of 

our patients, we too often neglected the realities of fiscal 

responsibility. In our benignly paternalistic fashion, we did 

things “our way” for a long time. That is why the unwelcome 

nose of the managed care camel has managed to creep so 

successfully under our tent. Entrepreneurs sensed what I 

call a “golden vacuum,” a chance to fill a perceived need 

and enjoy enormous profit. Undoubtedly, managed care has 

brought some renewed sense of discipline and fiscal reality 

to medicine. But as it exists, it has too many warts. Major 

modifications will occur, retaining some of the good things 

we have learned, but eliminating those that cause grief. 

The changes will be facilitated by implementation of the 

UHCS when those infamous mantras of “obligation to our 

shareholders” and “incentives and disincentives” have been 

expunged from our lexicon. This revolutionary concept will 

require patience and vigilance. It will not come easily. 

The intangibles of compassion, caring, and patient advocacy 

will always be a function of the sensitivity of the health 

care provider. These virtues must always be coupled with 

good medical science. I think it will all come to pass once 

medicine has survived the revolution and matured, to evolve 

a true partnership with those for whom we care. 

The original version of this paper was published ten 

years ago. On reflection, after ten years the noise level has 

increased; we seem to be edging toward a rational plan that 

will bring reasonable care to all our people. Perhaps it will 

take a bit longer, maybe more than another decade. But I’m 

not sure we have that much time. 


943 East Sawmill Canyon Place 

Green Valley, Arizona 85614 

E-mail: rhmoser@earthlink.net 


E Unum … Pluribus 

Today I witnessed mortals determine a man’s fatality 

A true Cartesian split 

His living body distanced from his sleeping mind 

No signs of awareness 

Eyes staring widely into nowhere 

No ability to seek out any final breaths of life 

Then the waiting 

For he had decided long before this day 

That he was to give of himself to others 

E Unum . . . Pluribus (From one . . . many) 

Out of the divorce from his emotional throne 

Comes a redistribution of carbon compounds 

who long to pledge allegiance to another leader 

So they make their journey, leaving familiar corridors 

And go to rejuvenate withering bodies 

Justin Yamanuha, MD 

Dr. Yamanuha is an intern at the University of Hawaii John A. Burns 

School of Medicine. His e-mail: justin.yamanuha@gmail.com.. 

The Pharos/Autumn 2009 31 

Erica Aitken

The physician at the movies 

Peter E. Dans, MD 

Slumdog Millionaire 

Starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, and Anil 

Kapoor. 

Directed by Danny Boyle, codirected by Loveleen Tandan. 1 

Rated R. Running time 120 minutes. 

Slumdog Millionaire begins in 2006 in Mumbai (formerly 

known as Bombay) as Jamal (Dev Patel), a young Muslim 

boy from the slums, is being tortured by police because he 

is competing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and is approaching 

the final stage of winning 20 million rupees, approximately 

$411,000 at the time. This feat by a slum dweller 

being unheard of, a question appears on the screen asking 

whether he a) cheated, b) is lucky, c) is a genius, or d) “it is 

written.” Police Sergeant Srinivas (Saurabh Shukla) holds 

Jamal’s head in a bucket of water, hangs him by his wrists, and 

applies electric shocks to his feet to try to get him to tell how 

he cheated. The police chief (Irrfan Khan) asks Jamal, “What 

the hell can a slumdog possibly know when doctors and lawyers 

never get past 60,000 rupees?” 

The film flashes back to the slum area of Mumbai with the 

young Jamal (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail) squatting in 

an outhouse and refusing to get out for somebody who wants 

to pay his brother Salim to use it. His brother then locks him 

in, just as well-known actor Amitabh Bachchan, the original 

host of the quiz show, comes to town. Being a fan of his and 

wanting to have him autograph a picture, Jamal has no way 

of getting out unless he drops into the pit, which he does. He 

then runs covered with feces and smelling to high heaven, and 

maneuvers through the crowd to get the photograph signed. 

This is the first of many improbable events bordering on the 

absurd in the movie. Later, his brother sells this prized possession, 

setting up the love-hate relationship that will carry 

through their lives. A flash forward to the quiz show reveals 

that the celebrity’s name is the correct answer to the first question. 

This starts a succession of flashbacks showing how Jamal 

gets the answers, not because of erudition, but—mirabile 

dictu—by recalling events in his life. 

The next scene shows women washing clothes and 

children bathing and playing in a polluted river. An 

attack occurs, presumably by Hindus, who cry 

out, “They’re Muslims, get them.” The police 

don’t help and the children’s mother is 

murdered. After their mother dies, the 

Dev Patel stars in Slumdog Millionaire. 

Warner Bros./Photofest. 

boys join a homeless group of children who comb through 

the garbage dump. They are transported to a camp where 

they are fed and housed and made to be beggars by Maman 

(Ankur Vikal), a crime boss. Maman orders a little boy to sing 

and when he doesn’t do it well, he has him blinded using acid 

and having his eyes removed, so he can be a more convincing 

beggar. This is one of the many reasons for the film’s R rating. 

Salim, who is now Maman’s henchman, realizes that Jamal is 

going to be blinded next, and helps him and their compatriot, 

the so-called “Third Musketeer” Latika (Rubina Ali), to escape. 

After a prolonged chase, the brothers hop on a train and 

Latika lets go of their hands and is left behind, much to Jamal’s 

dismay. Salim refuses to go back because it would mean certain 

death. Latika will become Jamal’s obsession. 

While trying to steal food from the dining car, the boys are 

pushed off the train at a speed that should have killed them. 

However, they are fine, although Jamal thinks they are in 

heaven when he sees the Taj Mahal. They now begin a life of 


Ayush Mahesh Khedekar and Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail in Slumdog Millionaire. 

Warner Bros./Photofest. 

crime, taking shoes from the tourists who leave them outside 

the mosque and leading tours when they know nothing about 

the Taj. While Jamal distracts the tourists, his compatriots 

steal tires and other things from a fancy car. When Jamal 

brings back an American couple to their vandalized car, an 

Indian starts to beat him up but the wife tells her husband to 

have him stop and to give Jamal money because, like “good 

Americans,” they feel guilty for what others did to them. Oh, 

yes, that’s how Jamal learns from Salim that Ben Franklin is on 

the $100 bill, another quiz question. 

Later, they go back to rescue Latika (Freida Pinto), and 

find that she has become the main attraction in a Mumbai 

brothel run by Maman (what’s a Hollywood favorite film 

without prostitutes?). Salim (Madhur Mittal) kills Maman 

with a Colt 45 and that’s how Jamal learns that the revolver 

was invented by Samuel Colt. After they escape, Salim chases 

Jamal away, with Latika’s consent, and takes her for his own. 

Salim now becomes the right-hand man of Maman’s enemy 

Javed (Mahesh Manjrekar). Jamal later becomes part of a call 

center and ultimately gets on the show Who Wants to Be a 

Millionaire? although how he does so is unclear because such 

shows have rigorous testing of contestants for knowledge and 

temperament. 

Through the call center, he traces his brother to a construction 

site and they fight. After they reconcile, Salim tells him 

that Latika is being kept by Javed at his mansion. Salim says 

a Muslim prayer of repentance and Jamal goes to see the girl. 

She tells him to forget her but he says he cannot and that he 

will be waiting at the train station for her every evening at 

five. Before Jamal leaves Javed’s house, he hears the name of 

a famous cricketer on the TV and that’s the way he knows 

the next answer. Latika finally comes to the station but she 

is kidnapped at knife point by Salim, who cuts her face. Of 

interest here is that the director forgets on which side she was 

cut and the wound which is on the right is seen on the left in a 

subsequent scene. The rest of the film shows the progression 

of Jamal in the quiz show, with the moderator Prem Kumar 

(Anil Kapoor) being portrayed as properly smarmy (shades of 

the film Quiz Show). When Jamal goes for 10 million rupees, 

the moderator tries to trick him by feeding him the wrong 

answer, but Jamal sees through it and picks the right answer. 

That’s when the moderator has the police kidnap Jamal to try 

to extract how he has cheated. Realizing that he is telling the 

truth, the police chief lets Jamal go on the day he goes for the 

20 million rupees. 

Jamal has one last lifeline for the question “What’s the 

name of the third musketeer?” Salim is now repentant about 

what he did to Latika and he helps her escape from the crime 

boss. For some reason, maybe ESP, he gives her his cell phone, 

which she seems clueless about. Jamal, figuring Salim would 

know the answer, calls Salim’s cell phone. At the last second 

before the contest staffer is about to hang up, Latika answers. 

Wouldn’t you know that even though she is the Third 

Musketeer, she doesn’t know the name of Aramis and Jamal is 

left to have to make the choice? Meantime, Javed finds out that 

Salim let Latika go and he shoots him while Salim is luxuriating 

in a bathtub full of money, his main desire in life. As he 

dies, Salim says, “God is great.” Needless to say, Jamal gets the 



right answer. He also meets Latika at an eerily empty Victoria 

train station, a marvelous relic of the British Raj and the film 

ends with “It is written.” The credits are augmented by lively 

Bollywood dancing, singing, and rap music, which are also 

liberally sprinkled throughout the film. 1 

Slumdog Millionaire garnered eight Oscars (cinematography, 

directing, editing, original music score, original song, 

sound, best picture, and screenplay). I found it hard to understand 

why this film was so widely praised. Having taken care 

of cholera patients for three months in Calcutta in 1963 in a 

God- forsaken hospital that serviced the nearby bustees (or 

slums), I was interested in seeing this film. It was depressing to 

see forty-six years later that in the midst of the wealth in India, 

the slums of this premier Indian city and headquarters of its 

film colony are estimated to house ten million of the city’s 

eighteen million inhabitants. Beyond the cinematic fantasyland, 

so-called “Mafia” are deliberately crippling children for 

profit, as in the film. 2 Indeed, it was not surprising to learn 

that the film, which I considered to be fatuous and exploitative, 

has spawned a mini- tourist boom for people wanting to 

visit the slums. 3 

Even more disconcerting was the backstory of the film, 

which grossed more than $200 million dollars (£140 million). 

The slum dwellers who appeared in the early scenes, especially 

the children, did not really benefit from all the hype and 

revenue this film generated. The slum home of Azharuddin 

Mohammed Ismail, who played the youngest Salim, was demolished 

after he was forcibly evicted and the family had to 

live in a shelter fashioned out of plastic sheets and bamboo 

shoots. 2 The family of another child star Rubina Ali (the 

youngest Latika) had been promised new housing by the 

authorities. Neither was remedied until the story went public 

and the filmmakers pledged £500,000 to help the children 

with housing and education. 4 

The film on its face is rather simplistic. That one could 

believe that all this boy’s life events could be tied into the 

questions that were asked is rather mind- boggling. There are 

a lot of things that are both gross and unsavory in the film. 

In some respects, it’s about celebrity (which Academy voters 

groove to). Admittedly, the cinematography is striking and 

almost surreal. There’s also lots of cool music and dancing 

as well as colorfully dressed people, and exotic locales. These 

attributes and the “love affair,” shallow as it is, may have been 

what swayed Academy voters. Whatever the case, it is probably 

the best testimony to the tawdry and sad state of feature 

films today that this was the best that they could come up with 

as Best Picture. What’s harder to believe is that the Academy is 

going to revert to the practice during the Golden Age of cinema 

of nominating ten films for Best Picture when they have 

trouble scrounging up five legitimate contenders. This action 

presumably is to make up for not including The Dark Knight 

in the 2008 nominees. 

If you rent the DVD, be forewarned that the subtitles are 

minuscule and that sometimes the dialogue is hard to decipher, 

especially as it goes from English to Hindi, which is 

heard in a third of the film. 1 Also, the extra features in the 

early DVDS carried by some video outlets had only promos 

and not for very good movies at that. Later, the studio released 

a DVD with more robust special features. 

References 

1. Jurgensen J. The co-pilot of ‘Slumdog’: How a little-known 

Indian filmmaker helped shape the acclaimed movie. Wall Street J 

2009 Jan 9: W6. 

2. Malone A. The real Slumdog Millionaires: Behind the cinema 

fantasy, mafia gangs are deliberately crippling children for profit. 

The Mail Online 2009 Jan 25. 

3. Sesser S. ‘Slumdog’ Tour Guide: Fueled by the movie, a crop 

of Mumbai tours promise an authentic view of the city. Wall Street 

J 2009 Feb 21–22: W5. 

4. Harris RL. New home for ‘Slumdog’ young star. New York 

Times 2009 Jul 5. 

The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher) 

Starring Karl Markovics, August Diehl, and David Striesow. 

Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. Rated R. In German with subtitles. 

Running time 98 minutes. 

U nlike Slumdog Millionaire, here’s an Academy Award 

winner (Best Foreign Film, 2007) that I can recommend. 

It is based on a memoir by Adolf Burger, who was a very alert 

ninety years old at the time the picture was made. As the film 

opens, World War II is over. A man sits on a lonely beach at 

the Beau Rivage (“beautiful shore”). He then goes to the Hotel 

de Paris in Monte Carlo and gambles, hooks up with a woman, 

and while they are having sex, she notices that he was in a 

concentration camp. The film then flashes back to Berlin in 

1936. The man’s name is Salomon Sorowitsch or “Sally” (Karl 

Markovics), a highly successful Jewish master counterfeiter 

who expresses no concern about the Jews being rounded up, 

saying, “I’m me and the others are the others.” He adds that the 

Jews are persecuted because they fail to adapt, which he says 

is not that hard. While making a fake Argentine passport for 

a beautiful woman, he is busted by the Nazi anti- counterfeit 

agency and jailed. In 1939, he is transferred to a concentration 

camp where he makes many portraits of Nazis and their families. 

Because of his talent, he is transferred in 1944 to another 

camp run by an SS officer who turns out to be the German 

policeman Friedrich Herzog (David Striesow) who arrested 

him in 1936. Herzog laughingly tells a subordinate that Sally’s 

capture got him promoted, signaling a mutually beneficial 

bond between them. 

Sally has been recruited for Operation Bernhard, an 


August Diehl in The Counterfeiters. 

Sony Pictures/Photofest. 

attempt by the Germans to counterfeit large sums of British 

and American banknotes to flood their markets, thereby 

destroying their economies, while using the bogus money to 

purchase arms and other supplies. To accomplish this, they’ve 

sequestered a bunch of skilled pressmen, photographers, and 

engravers. The prisoners have nice beds, cigarettes, water, 

clothes, and music to drown out the screams of the other 

prisoners as they are killed. 

Sally meets up with Adolf Burger (August Diehl), a commercial 

photographer whose wife and children are in another 

camp (later he will learn of their deaths). A Russian Jewish 

Communist and activist, Burger is not happy with being given 

special treatment. Sally, whose real name was Smolianoff, has 

a green triangle tattoo indicating that he is a criminal, having 

been jailed for counterfeiting. He is initially ostracized by the 

French, Dutch, and Belgian inmates who have red triangles 

indicating that they were political prisoners. Having worked 

in banks and printing presses, they consider themselves to be 

law- abiding people and disdain him as a criminal. This amuses 

Sally, who has a very detached way of looking at the world 

while sizing up people and saying little. Sally tells Burger, “I’m 

not a murderer, just a counterfeiter.” Being an excellent artist, 

he asks to draw Burger, who considers it futile because “all of 

us are going up the chimney.” Sally says, “You never know.” 

In the DVD feature, Burger shows the director the picture of 

himself drawn by Smolianoff in 1944. 

They’re taken to the showers and are scared that they’re 

going to be gassed. Sally says that, because of their value, they 

won’t be killed, at least not yet. To emphasize this point, when 

the Nazis determine that someone has tuberculosis, they are 

immediately killed so as not to spread it to the other prisoners. 

Burger keeps arguing that they should not be doing this. Sally 

tells him, “You are here to survive; only by surviving can we 

hope to beat them.” They are successful in producing pound 

notes that Nazi agents in Zürich bring to a Swiss bank, where 

they are authenticated. The agent demands that they send the 

notes to the Bank of England for confirmation. The Bank of 

England verifies that they are authentic. The inmates are given 

a ping-pong table as a reward by the commandant who tells 

them, “Trickery and fakery are what you Jews are good at.” 

The next task is forging the dollar, which is more difficult 

because the Americans use a rotogravure technique, whereas 

the Europeans use collotypes, with which the prisoners are 

more familiar. Burger refuses to cooperate because he feels 

that this will favor the Nazis if they are successful and resorts 

to sabotage, which Herzog suspects. He tells them to complete 

the task in four weeks or else they will be shot. Sally makes a 

deal with Herzog to get some medicines for a young boy with 

tuberculosis when they complete the task. After he gets the 

medicine, the boy is shot by the sadistic sergeant, who tells 

the prisoners that the boy “was a Jew, but he died like a man.” 

There are some odd scenes where the inmates put on a cabaret 



show for their compatriots and the Germans. Finally when the 

Russians close in on Berlin, the Germans leave the camp and 

those who were living in abject conditions get to see how the 

other half lived. This produces a very interesting dynamic as 

the prisoners confront one another. 

The excellent DVD special features tell a very interesting 

story. The actual camp known as Sachsenhausen was a 

counterfeiting workshop where the prisoners forged £132 

million, four times Britain’s foreign currency reserve. Thanks 

to the delaying tactics, few bogus dollars were produced. 

According to Burger, “Operation Bernhard remains the largest 

counterfeiting operation of all time.” He describes how the 

140 prisoners made British, U.S., and Swiss passports, as well 

as stamps and NK VD identity cards. As noted, their section 

of the camp was quite different from Birkenau, from where 

Burger had been transferred. There, 300 persons were housed 

in a horse stable with three rows of beds, no water, and no hygiene. 

Here, there were two rows of beds with white linen and 

pillows. Everything was clean. Burger had his own bed rather 

being five in a bed. There was a recreation room with tables, 

benches, newspapers, and chess and other games. There was 

music, mainly opera, playing all the time. He got a whole loaf 

of bread versus 300 grams of bread at the other prison. The 

prisoners didn’t wear clogs but leather shoes. Their hair was 

not cut like the other prisoners. All in all, they felt that they 

were “dead men on a holiday, never expecting to walk away 

and live from this secret operation.” 

They were lined up at 10 am and were promised that if 

they were successful that they would have villas built for them 

after the “final victory.” They would have freedom, women, etc. 

However if they sabotaged the work, they would be executed. 

In real life Burger said he was more like Sally in wanting to be 

a survivor rather than sticking to the ideals and principles uttered 

by his character in the film. Still, he was not as gung-ho 

as Smolianoff, who was more intent on creating the perfect 

counterfeit dollar than sabotaging the Nazis. This is reminiscent 

of the British colonel’s desire to build an excellent bridge 

in The Bridge on the River Kwai and his reluctance to destroy 

it despite its being used by the Japanese against the British. 

When the pounds were made, they could not be sabotaged 

in ways that would escape detection by their Nazi 

overseers, so the prisoners devised a way to signal that they 

were forged. Burger relates that pound notes were too big for 

Britons to carry around in wallets, so they would string the 

notes together by making needle pricks at the corners. Thus, 

the prisoners put needle pricks where they were not usually 

placed, such as the heads of the Royals. As for sabotaging the 

notes and the dollars, it was the Dutch foreman Jacobsen, not 

Burger, who was responsible. 

As the Russians neared Berlin, the camp was evacuated and 

the inmates were taken to the Austrian Alps. The money was 

put in boxes and sunk in Lake Toplitz, where they were protected 

by neo-Nazis after the war in anticipation of their use 

in the Fourth Reich. This is the central theme of The Salzburg 

Connection, by one of my favorite authors, Helen MacInnes. 

In 1957 the German magazine Stern tried to retrieve the boxes 

and recovered some. On July 2, 2000, the Americans, using 

special techniques that cost $1 million, were able to retrieve 

the bulk of the currency. 

The actor who played Smolianoff in the movie said that 

he felt privileged to be able to play the role of an antihero—a 

man with many different faces but a minimalist with regard to 

activity or emotion. Like a poker player, he always took stock 

of people and his surroundings so he could understand and 

control them. There is some evidence that he did go to Monte 

Carlo after the war, although the details of his postwar life 

are sketchy. Originally, Burger, after being liberated, went to 

the nearby village with a gun and demanded that he be given 

a camera and film. He then documented the camp that he’d 

been held in and after publishing a small book in 1945, he put 

it all behind him. Twenty years later, Burger wrote The Devil’s 

Workshop after accumulating 200 documents from the various 

camps. His purpose was to counter the Holocaust Denial 

being promulgated by neo-Nazis. 

The director said that the critical acclaim and box office 

receipts were higher in the United States, England, and other 

countries than in Germany and Austria. As an Austrian, he 

believes that the people of these countries are aware of the 

crimes. They acknowledge feeling some responsibility but don’t 

know what to do about it because they were not personally 

guilty. He says, “My grandfather was a Nazi but what do I do 

about it?” He noted that two other German films, Downfall, 

which focused on the last days of the Nazis in Hitler’s bunker 

in Berlin, and Sophie Scholl, about German resistance fighters 

were popular. He contrasted this with films that might focus on 

ordinary Germans and Austrians, who supported the regime 

outside the camps, which I certainly would find more interesting 

but their audiences would find uncomfortable. He believes 

his film is less confrontational because the screenplay was written 

from the perspective of a crooked jailbird who knows how 

to survive in jail and thus survives in the concentration camp. 

Additionally, he said that he could make a movie about a 

privileged group in a concentration camp, but not of life in the 

cruelest camps. His reasoning was that he and the audience 

would not be able to identify with the characters, not knowing 

how they would act in such terrible circumstances. His feeling 

was that identifying with those who were more privileged than 

others was easier because such disparities are found in our 

world and thus pose an existential moral question. 

Dr. Dans (AΩA, Columbia University College of Physicians and 

Surgeons, 1960) is a member of The Pharos’s editorial board and 

has been its film critic since 1990. His address is: 

11 Hickory Hill Road 

Cockeysville, Maryland 21030 

E-mail: pdans@comcast.net 


Numbers 

You have lived for 25 years, 

HIV-positive for 10, frank AIDS for 5. 

Lung abscess 7 years ago, 

angry sores in your mouth soon after. 

But your difficulties with walking and holding your urine; 

you can’t say when those exactly began. 

I am 24 and palpably eager. 

Sweeping in at 6 am in my white coat which 

Jingles, 

with 7 metal implements. 

Sags, 

with 20 pounds of medical detritus. 

I am here at 6 am 

Every morning of this 30-day rotation 

In a 10-month school year. 

I am here. 

“25-year-old female AIDS patient (CD4 count of 64) in room 214 on 

hospital day 6.” 

I have a million questions with numbers as answers. 

Because the more I avoid the alphabet 

With its infinite words 

lamentations, prayers, expletives; 

The less I know what it is to be you, 

Dark-haired girl, 

with an infection that we will quantify to death. 

One morning, 

I will ask you about your life and what came before. 

What brought you here. 

We will sit knee to knee like young women do. 

Maybe even laugh. 

Just us two. 

Leah B. Rosenberg 

Ms. Rosenberg is a fourth-year medical student at Mount Sinai 

School of Medicine. Her address is: One Gustave L. Levy Place, Box 

1255, New York, New York 10029-6574. E-mail: leah.rosenberg@mssm.edu. 



David A. Bennahum, MD, and Jack Coulehan, MD, Book Review Editors 

Ideas: A History of Thought 

and Invention, from Fire to 

Freud 

Peter Watson 

HarperCollins, New York, 2005 

Reviewed by Henry N. Claman, MD 

(AΩA, University of Colorado, 1979) 

With the study of History (big H) 

becoming so comprehensive, 

more multicultural, more pushed back 

into prehistory, as well as more contemporary, 

you would think that it would be 

impossible to write a one- volume history 

of the world. And you would be wrong, 

as I believe that Peter Watson has done 

just that—history without the battles, 

starting with Lucy. (Well, the history 

of the world at least up 

to 1900. The twentieth century 

is covered in another 

Watson book, The 

Modern Mind). 

To be sure, 

single- or double- authored histories of 

the world are not new. In size, Watson’s 

746 pages of text (plus notes and indices) 

lies between H. G. Wells’s The 

Outline of History and Will and Ariel 

Durant’s majesterial eleven- volume The 

Story of Civilization. In quality it is up 

to both of them but it is different. 

Watson is a historian at the 

University of Cambridge and knows 

how to write. He seizes on ideas, which 

he describes and explores for the general 

reader. While there are some grand 

“ uber- ideas” such as the idea of Europe, 

the idea of the soul (which he finds 

more inclusive than God), and the idea 

of the experiment, most of the ideas are 

more focused. Consider the concept of 

time, the question of measurement, the 

ideas of plus and minus, the factory, the 

existence and nature of progress, the 

electromagnetic field, the unconscious, 

the particulate nature of matter, and 

so on. He discusses the rise and fall of 

ideas, and even their life histories, for 

instance the migration of science and 

scholarship from the (mostly) Muslim 

Middle East to Christian Europe beginning 

in the eleventh century. 

For the physician, however, wanting 

to look at the ideas underlying the 

theory and practice of medicine, this 

book will be something of a disappointment. 

Watson does discuss the idea 

of the anatomic basis of medicine and 

the importance of the experiment, and 

the discovery of the circulation of the 

blood, but in general medical ideas are 

not as prominent as those in physics 

and chemistry, for example. There are 

also some omissions here. Surely the 

idea of the communicability of disease is 

worthy of inclusion. Although Watson’s 

two indices are inadequate, I still find no 

mention of this topic, or germ theory or 

sepsis, nor the names of Pasteur, Lister, 

Koch, or Fleming. But there are gems; 

we find that the great Persian physician, 

Rhazes (Al-Razi), who wrote over 

200 books around 900 AD, had one 

named Why People Prefer Quacks and 

Charlatans to Skilful Physicians. An 

idea, to be sure. 

There is an anomaly in the last chapter 

(before the brief conclusion). It is 

a short chapter—eighteen pages—entitled 

“Modernism and the Discovery of 

the Unconscious.” The beginning (and 

most) of the chapter, comprising over 

eleven pages, is devoted to Freud and 

his ideas. These get far more space than 

is devoted to any idea complex in the 

book. First, Freud’s claims, ideas, and 

doctrines are described. Then follows a 

devastating critique of the man and his 

work, implying that he was intellectually 

dishonest (a liar), perhaps a charlatan. 

Whatever the “truth” may be, the magnitude 

and intensity of the discussion 

are out of proportion to the rest of the 

book. What is behind this outburst I do 

not know. 


But this exceptional section does 

not take away anything from the rest 

of Ideas. It is a splendid, readable, insightful 

volume. It can be read through, 

or consulted as a reference, or just 

browsed. A major contribution. 

Dr. Claman is Distinguished Professor of 

Medicine and Associate Director of the 

Medical Humanities Program at the University 

of Colorado, Denver. He is a recipient 

of the 2009 Bonfils Stanton Award for 

Science/Medicine for his work on the discovery 

of the T cell/B cell interaction. He 

is a member of the editorial board of The 

Pharos. His address is: 

Allergy/Immunology B164 RC2 

12700 E. 19th Avenue, Room 10100 

Aurora, Colorado 80045 

E-mail: henry.claman@ucdenver.edu 

Splendors and Miseries of the 

Brain: Love, Creativity, and the 

Quest for Human Happiness 

Semir Zeki 

Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford (UK), 2008, 256 

pages 

Reviewed by John C. M. Brust, MD 

(AΩA, Columbia University, 1962) 

Over the past thirty-five years Semir 

Zeki has made major contributions 

to our understanding of visual perception, 

including color vision, kinetic and 

illusory contours, stereoscopic depth, 

and ambiguous figures. More recently 

his focus has broadened, as evidenced 

by studies such as “Neural correlates of 

beauty,” 1 “The neural basis of romantic 

love,” 2 and “The neural correlates of 

maternal and romantic love.” 3 In 1999 he 

produced Inner Vision: An Exploration 

of Art and the Brain, 4 which might be 

described as an introduction to the field 

of neuroaesthetics for general readers. 

In Splendors and Miseries of the Brain 

(the title is taken from Balzac’s novel, 

Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes) he 

offers neural correlates of “love, creativity, 

and the quest for human happiness.” 

The book has four sections. 

“Abstraction and the Brain” describes 

how the ability of neurons and brain 

areas to abstract from “every specificity” 

(e.g., verticality, direction of motion, 

magnitude, irregularity) leads to “concept 

formation.” There are two kinds of 

concepts. Inherited concepts (e.g., color) 

are immutable and largely “autonomous 

of the higher cognitive systems of the 

brain.” Acquired (“synthetic”) concepts 

are continuously modified by experience 

and memory and are “strongly dependent 

upon influences from other, often 

‘higher,’ [brain] areas.” Although mutable 

(in contrast to Plato’s ideal abstractions), 

the “perfection” of synthetic concepts 

rarely matches what is encountered in 

the outer world, resulting in continual 

dissatisfaction. Also in contrast to 

Platonic ideals, “perfection” resides in 

the brain rather than in the world outside, 

even though we may be “unaware 

of the synthetic concept itself.” 

Part II, “Brain Concepts and 

Ambiguity,” describes the difference between 

visual processing and visual perception, 

and offers evidence that higher 

brain regions participate in conscious 

perception when what is being viewed 

is “ambiguous”—that is, subject to more 

than one interpretation. Color is unambiguous 

and its conscious perception 

can occur with sufficient stimulation of 

a specialized “node” (area V4) within 

the occipital cortex. Ambiguous figures 

such as the Kaniza cube, which can be 

interpreted in two ways (“bi- stability”), 

activate areas in the occipital cortex 

critical for line orientation and object 

recognition, and each time a percept 

consciously changes from one condition 

to another, the fronto- parietal cortex 

becomes engaged. Objects with higher 

levels of ambiguity—including works 

of art—evoke the participation of widespread 

cortical areas and of pre- existing 

concepts, which are in turn modified by 

the experience. 

In Part III, “Unachievable Brain 

Concepts,” Zeki discusses several artists 

whose work reflects the failure of 

reality to match the synthetic brain concept 

that it has generated. Two-thirds 

of Michelangelo’s sculptures were never 

finished; his biographer Vasari noted, 

“Michelangelo’s non finito reflects the 

sublimity of his ideas, which again and 

again lay beyond the reach of his hands.” 

Titian’s late paintings display splotchy 

colors and indistinct boundaries (pittura 

di macchia), “the coherence of the 

picture increasing if it is not viewed too 

closely.” Cezanne’s paintings combine 

color patches with areas of empty canvas, 

leaving it “to the viewer’s brain to 

construct the final image.” A novel by 

Zola, L’Oeuvre, describes an artist who 

commits suicide because his synthetic 

brain concept of female beauty prevents 

any actual model from satisfying him. 

Part IV, “Brain Concepts of Love,” 

ups the ante: if art requires ambiguity 

because the brain’s aesthetic concepts 

cannot be reproduced, how do we address 

the concept of love, especially romantic 

love? Zeki takes us back to Plato’s 

Symposium and the idea of love as a 

yearning to rejoin one’s separated half. 

Although such union is impossible, the 

concept of romantic love as merging 

into a unity is pervasive across cultures. 

Wholeness and unity being unattainable 

on earth, “lovers often look to another 

world,” sometimes death, sometimes 

God. Zeki describes his own functional 

imaging studies in which viewing pictures 

of a loved partner activated limbic 

areas involved in reward, and deactivated 

frontal areas involved in “the making of 



judgments.” He observes that in prarie 

voles, oxytocin and vasopressin are required 

for sustained monogamy; these 

hormones thus “seem to play a crucial 

role in forming a concept of the kind of 

partner that an organism wants to be 

with.” Zeki then turns to literary expressions 

of “unity and annilation in love,” 

citing Dante and Beatrice, Petrarch and 

Laura, Tristan and Isolde, St. Theresa and 

Christ, Krishna and Radha, and examples 

from Sufi mystic poetry. In each instance 

a recurring theme is “incapacity to find 

. . . the counterpart to the brain concept 

of love.” In Death in Venice, Thomas 

Mann describes Aschenbach’s obsession 

with the beautiful Tadzio: “what he saw 

was beauty’s very essence; form as divine 

thought, the single and pure perfection 

which resides in the mind.” 

Zeki concludes with a neurobiological 

assessment of Freud’s Civilization and 

Its Discontents. Freud saw discontent as 

resulting from the clash between human 

variability and its needs, and the demands 

for uniform conduct imposed by 

society, especially religion. Zeki believes 

Freud “did not frame the question broadly 

enough.” For Zeki, “It is . . . inaccessibility 

in the real world of the counterpart of the 

synthetic concept (ideal) formed in the 

brain that constitutes . . . one of the root 

causes of human discontent.” 

Zeki repeatedly emphasizes that the 

subject of his book is not what the brain 

reveals about art and literature but what 

art and literature reveal about the brain. 

He credits philosophical underpinnings 

to his views in the contributions 

of Immanuel Kant, whose “manner of 

thinking about knowledge and its acquisition 

. . . is fundamental to neurobiology.” 

Kant “supposed that our knowledge 

of this world depends not only upon the 

physical reality but also on the contribution 

that the mind (in our instance, the 

brain) makes to the acquisition of that 

knowledge and the limitations that it imposes 

upon it.” In neurobiological terms, 

for Zeki, “there is [only] one reality, brain 

reality, which is shaped by both external 

and internal influences.” 

Anticipating criticism, Zeki remarks, 

“A link between simple perceptual ambiguity 

and the ambiguity inherent in 

so exalted a sentiment as love may seem 

absurd.” But, he notes, neurobiology can 

allow the brain to repeat “a solution that 

has been found to be expedient over 

and over again.” I suspect many readers 

will, like me, find this a less-thanconvincing 

argument. Finding parallels 

in the ambiguity of Kaniza cubes and 

Dante’s Paradiso requires a leap of faith 

that functional imaging does not yet justify. 

(I am reminded of Roger Penrose’s 

attempt, in The Emperor’s New Mind, 5 

to explain consciousness in terms of 

quantum mechanics.) However, such 

skepticism does not make Zeki’s hypothesis 

“absurd,” and the audacious breadth 

of his subject is continually provocative. 

Zeki’s self- confidence does not permit 

irony, but his writing is clear and consistently 

entertaining. 

References 

1. Kawabata H, Zeki S. Neural correlates 

of beauty. J Neurophysiol 2004; 91: 

1699–705. 

2. Bartels A, Zeki S. The neural basis 

of romantic love. Neuroreport 2000; 11: 

3829–34. 

3. Bartels A, Zeki S. The neural correlates 

of maternal and romantic love. Neuroimage 

2004; 21: 1155–66. 

4. Zeki S. Inner Vision: An Exploration 

of Art and the Brain. New York: Oxford 

University Press; 2000. 

5. Penrose R. The Emperor’s New Mind: 

Concerning Computers, Minds, and the 

Laws of Physics. New York: Oxford University 

Press; 2002. 

Dr. Brust is Professor of Clinical Neurology 

at the Columbia University College of 

Physicians and Surgeons. He is a member 

of the editorial board of The Pharos. His 

address is: 

Harlem Hospital Center 

Department of Neurology 

506 Lenox Avenue 

New York, New York 10037 

E-mail: jcb2@columbia.edu 

The Orange Wire Problem and 

Other Tales from the Doctor’s 

Office 

David Watts 

University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, IA, 

2009, 186 pages 

Reviewed by Audrey Shafer, MD 

E ssayist, poet, filmmaker, National 

Public Radio commentator, gastroenterologist, 

jazz musician, and writing 

workshop leader David Watts presents 

twenty-six delectable stories nestled between 

prefatory and postlude remarks. 

Although David Watts is not the paragon 

fantasized in the 1978 song of the 

same name by the Kinks, he is multitalented 

indeed. 

Watts has also written a previous, critically 

acclaimed book of essays: Bedside 

Manners: One Doctor’s Reflections on 

the Oddly Intimate Encounters between 

Patient and Healer (Random House, 

2005) as well as several books of poems, 

including Taking the History (Nightshade 

Press, 1999). Watts’s experience with the 

craft of writing, including an attention to 

breath, space, and clarity in his poems, 

gives the stories in the current volume a 

lyricism and pace conducive to enjoyable 

reading. 

Watts declares the stories to be “true,” 

or “as close to truth as words and memory 

and protection of identity allow,” in 

other words, “nonfiction essays.” pxiv The 

stories are thus clinical tales, along the 

lines of collections by Danielle Ofri and 

other contemporary practicing physicians 

who write and publish nonfiction 

essays with patient de- identifiers. Such 


writings are increasingly popular not 

only in medical journals (longstanding 

columns in Annals of Internal Medicine 

or JAMA, for example) but also in the 

popular press (Pauline Chen, Abigail 

Zuger, and Larry Zaroff regularly publish 

brief clinical tales in The New York 

Times) and Internet blogs (see www. 

epmonthly.com/whitecoast/blog-links 

for a list of specialty related blogs, some 

of which are patient- story centered). 

In some of the tales Watts is the patient, 

in some his friends are, but most 

of the stories focus on his interactions 

with patients in his office practice. And 

since Watts believes doctors should be 

“on familiar terms with their patients,” pxv 

the doctor- patient interactions turn out 

to be that: two-way streets. For instance, 

in “Brain Damage,” we meet a patient 

who is a writer and the daughter of a 

physician, that is, a patient who is culturally 

and intellectually Watts’s equal. 

Watts has returned from yet another 

Tahoe ski injury vacation and examines 

her despite his crutch and arm sling. She 

questions him and teases him, particularly 

when she discovers he is still doing 

endoscopies thus encumbered and in 

pain. Furthermore, his healing process is 

slowed by his stubborn efforts to work. 

By the end of the office visit, she assesses 

his health choices and advises him 

to change his ways. He thanks her for 

the “consultation,” to which she rejoins, 

“Don’t worry . . . I’ll send you a bill.” p34 

Watts deemphasizes punctuation in 

dialogue. No quotation marks demarcate 

the beginning and ending of speech. He 

uses few “he said” or “I said” identifiers 

to clearly spell out who is speaking. 

However, almost all of the dialogue pingpongs 

between two people and Watts 

does, per convention, begin each speaker 

on a new line, like a new line of poetry. 

Hence the conversation is easy to follow. 

The lack of punctuation serves to make 

the story fluid—barriers between doctor 

and patient are reduced, barriers between 

what is said aloud and what Watts 

is thinking are porous, and ultimately 

the goal is successful: barriers between 

reader and characters are minimized 

and the reader is brought into the story. 

The intensive use of dialogue also underlines 

the importance of listening and 

communicating in the doctor- patient 

relationship. Although most of the stories 

do follow the “ doctor-as- hero” plot 

line, self- deprecating though the doctor 

may be, Watts gets to be hero because he 

makes an effort to listen, exchange ideas, 

and communicate with his patients. 

In one story, “Silence Knows the 

Right Questions,” the lesson of listening 

is brought front and center. A woman 

with a ten-year history of headaches, 

refractory to treatments after multiple 

doctor consultations, had decided to 

simply live with the headaches until a 

friend insisted she see Dr. Watts. Watts 

notes that “something about her the very 

instant she walked in the room told me 

to keep my damn mouth shut./So I do./ 

And she begins.” He comments that the 

average time a doctor gives a patient 

to speak before interruption is thirteen 

seconds. But Watts doesn’t say anything, 

not during her initial five- minute volley, 

and even after, as they sit in silence for 

a full minute. The silence allows her to 

continue, gives her permission to continue. 

She recounts a recent banking 

errand: “I suddenly realized that I . . . 

did not want to be in the same elevator 

with my husband.” She asks Watts what 

that means. And he, in one of the wisest 

moments of the collection says, “I don’t 

know what it means. I’m not sure. But I 

do know it’s really important.” p55 After 

they “sit with this new important thing 

in the room, both . . . beginning to feel 

its shape and texture,” he suggests she 

leave, think about it, then return to see 

him. Her realization, the implications 

and resultant life changes fill the silences 

with a profundity that reaffirms how 

privileged the doctor is to be invited to 

the intimate recesses of another’s being. 

The volume deals mostly with relational 

issues, but one instance of a 

story with socioeconomic implications 

is “Mother Teresa and the Problem of 

Care.” One of Watts’ patients pleads 

with him to see his adult son: “You don’t 

accept MediCal, but you will see him 

for me. See him for me. Please, Doctor. 

You are the best. My son. My son. He 

needs you.” The broken MediCal system 

in California is a clarion call for health 

care reform: a great multitude of doctors 

can and do refuse to see MediCal 

patients because the abysmal reimbursement 

makes the work “basically a pro 

bono deal.” p170 Watts also states: “I knew 

that beyond considerations of finance, 

MediCal patients are the ones most 

likely to cancel appointments, not follow 

directions, and generally not take care of 

themselves.” p171 The patient does indeed 

precipitously cancel his colonoscopy appointment, 

causing Watts to consider 

whether to summon the grace, patience, 

and sense of duty to humanity to allow 

the patient to reschedule. Of course, we 

know Watts will, otherwise the story 

would not have been written. 

Watts infuses his stories with personal 

details—his thoughts on writing 

and its intersections with doctoring, his 

interactions with friends and their medical 

issues, his own neuroses and foibles 

and prior heartbreaks, and most of all, 

his love for his young sons. He ends 

the book as a proud father, comfortable 

in companionship with his threeyear-old 

son, “standing together on this 

lip of sidewalk overlooking the world 

below.” p186 And, just as his son releases 

a burst of soap bubbles, filling the air 

with love and good will for his mother 

to walk through on her way to a weekend 

of work, so too does the author 

release his words to the public, secure 

that the reader can return, whenever she 

chooses, to examine twenty-six microcosms 

and the stories therein. 

Dr. Shafer is professor in the Department of 

Anesthesia at Stanford University School of 

Medicine and staff anesthesiologist at the 

Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. 

She is a member of the editorial board 

of The Pharos. Her address is: 

VAPAHCS 

Anesthesia Service 112A 

3801 Miranda Avenue 

Palo Alto, California 94304 

E-mail: ashafer@stanford.edu 


!"#$%&''()' 

Emerging from an alleyway, the man 

who smells like rotting meat holds out his hand, 

then, growling, grabs my shoulder. His rough hand 

digs in my flesh. With eyes hard like a man 

who hasn’t looked for years at anyone, 

and knows hate well, and now has found the means 

to terrify, he glares a glare that means 

I want your bag. I shake. He has a gun. 

Later on my shift, I thought I saw him 

limping to the ER. Without a word, 

he scowled and took a bed. I would have loved 

to scare him back, if it was really him. 

There wasn’t time, no room for one more word— 

beds full of those beloved and unloved. 

Joanna Pearson 

Ms. Pearson is a member of the Class of 2010 at Johns Hopkins 

University School of Medicine. This poem won third prize in the 2009 

Pharos Poetry Competition. The author’s e-mail address is: pearson. 

joanna@gmail.com. 


Letters to the editor 

Academic uses for The Pharos 

Last fall I offered some copies of an issue of The Pharos to 

a faculty member in our Medical Humanities and Bioethics 

office and asked her to distribute them as well as to encourage 

Humanities students to submit entries to the AΩA 

poetry competition. Subsequently, I learned that selected 

articles from The Pharos were being used to support other 

Humanities teaching activities. 

Marjorie Sirridge, MD, founder of the Sirridge Office of 

the Medical Humanities and Bioethics in 1992, Lynda Payne, 

PhD, Sirridge Endowed Professor of Medical Humanities 

and Bioethics, and Marilyn Pesto, JD, RN, Humanities Office 

Director, are using the journal in new courses such as: 

�� 

�� 

�� 

�� 

�� 

�� 

�� 

��Pharos articles exquisitely 

support these courses. 

�� 

supported, and I have subsequently supplied a large portion 

�� 

of Medicine Pharos allotment for this purpose. 

Some of the Humanities faculty use specific articles as 

required reading for their courses and include the content in 

the final exam. Of course, the students are free to keep the 

issue and read it in its entirety. 

Upon recently discussing this with Ms. Pesto, who pioneered 

some of these recent applications of The Pharos, she 

articulated that the articles are well written, and relevant 

�� 

are using the “Drinking in Earnest: Alcohol paradigms in 

Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls�� 

��sician 

in Medicine, Literature and Law. 

Dr. Sirridge related that since the specific objective 

of the Office was to design and create 

a group of selective offerings that brought 

medical practice closer to the humanities, 

she has also used the articles 

�� 

specifically, “Medical science 

as magic and metaphor: 

��The Magic Mountain�� 

�� 

�� 

movies: Awakenings�� 

�� 

�� 

�� 

��The 

Pharos at our institution. 

�� 

(AΩA, University of Missouri—Kansas City, 2005) 

Councilor, Delta Missouri 

Professor of Medicine, University of Missouri—Kansas City 

School of Medicine 

Kansas City, Missouri 

For Whom the Bell Tolls and “New Medical 

Terms” 

I read the article by Dr. Gregory Miday in the Spring issue 

of The Pharos�� 

containing an error of significance. Ingrid Bergman did not 

play Pilar in the movie For Whom the Bell Tolls. Instead, she 

played the much younger character, Maria, the character for 

whom the earth moved in the novel. Pilar was Pablo’s wife 

in both the novel and the movie, and it was she who became 

the guerrillas’ chief when her husband had, in her words, “no 

cojones.” Pilar was played by Katina Paxinou. I remember the 

character of Pilar well because, reading the novel in the early 

�� 

a Spanish-English dictionary. Having done so, I have never 

forgotten it and have quoted Pilar about several administrators 

I have met in my lengthy career. 

��cal 

terms on page 26 of the same issue. It reminded me of the 

time I dictated a letter to a referring physician about a patient 

and mentioned that the dorsalis pedis pulses were both 

palpable. Our new clerk/typist handed me the rough draft 

in which she had typed that the “dorsalis penis” pulses were 

palpable. I had never palpated such a vessel, nor attempted 

such a procedure. 

Murray L. Levin, MD 

(AΩA, Tufts University School of Medicine, 1961) 

Chicago, Illinois 


2009 Alpha Omega Alpha Professionalism Fellowship 

The Board of Directors of Alpha Omega Alpha is pleased to 

announce the winners of the Professionalism Fellowship, 

offered for the first time in 2009. The purpose, design, and 

implementation of this program is to emphasize the crucial 

role of professionalism in being a physician. It is our belief 

that the components of professionalism can be both taught 

and learned. Applications were open to medical schools with 

active AΩA chapters. Faculty who have demonstrated personal 

dedication to teaching and research in specific aspects of 

professionalism that could be transferred directly to medical 

students or resident physicians were encouraged to apply for 

these funds. 

More than thirty applications for the fellowship were received. 

Three were chosen as winners by a panel of educators 

with research interests and teaching experience in professionalism 

and its applications. 

The common theme of the successful proposals is focused 

study of specific components of professionalism that can be 

exported to other faculties of medicine and taught to residents 

and medical students. 

David Grande, MD, MPA 

Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of 

Pennsylvania 

Dr. Grande was awarded $25,000 to develop a training 

program for residents in health policy and civic engagement. 

As he has stated in his proposal, civic professionalism represents 

the responsibility of the profession to look outward 

from the health care system to influence the underlying social, 

economic, and political factors determining health policy 

and health care in our communities. His goal is to develop 

a civic professionalism and health policy curriculum within 

the Internal Medicine Residency program at the University 

of Pennsylvania that subsequently could be successful in 

residency programs in all specialties across the country. Dr. 

Grande’s academic preparation for this project includes an 

MPA from Princeton, participation in a Robert Wood Johnson 

Clinical Scholars program at Penn, and, at a practical level, his 

close collaboration with the Department of Public Health in 

the City of Philadelphia in launching the Healthy Philadelphia 

program for a broad group of its citizens. 

Laura Ellen Hill-Sakurai, MD 

Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine at 

the University of California, San Francisco 

Dr. Hill-Sakurai was awarded $12,500 to examine whether 

continuity of the clinical clerkship sites for medical students 

plays a significant role in developing a more professional climate. 

The outcomes will be particularly important to assess 

because many medical schools across the country are transitioning 

to programs that plant clerks in one hospital for multiple 

clerkship experiences. Dr. Hill-Sakurai’s broad training in 

statistical and qualitative methods and participation in UCSF’s 

Teaching Scholars Program gives her strong credentials for 

this work. Of note is that her proposed research stems directly 

from reports submitted by students that helped focus discussions 

on both their faculty’s professionalism and their own. 

Brendan P. Kelly, MD 

Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Tufts 

University School of Medicine and Associate Director of 

the Med-Peds residency programs at Baystate Medical 

Center in Springfield, Massachusetts 

Dr. Kelly was awarded $12,500 to develop new combinations 

of programs for teaching professionalism to residents 

in all specialties. Semi- structured interviews around “critical 

incidents” regarding professionalism will be followed by 

analysis of transcripts and identification of the most important 

and common themes of professionalism. This “bottom up” approach 

should generate valid directions for thematic learning 

and teaching in professionalism that will be made available for 

residency programs across the country. 

Alpha Omega Alpha Administrative 

Recognition Awards, 2008/2009 

This award recognizes the AΩA chapter administrators 

who are so important to the functioning of the chapter. 

The nomination is made by the councilor or other officer of 

the chapter. A gift certificate is awarded to the individual, as 

well as a framed Certificate of Appreciation. 

The following awards were made in 2009: 

CALIFORNIA 

Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California 

Mandy Garcia 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health 

Sciences 

Elizabeth Mondo 

ILLINOIS 

Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine 

and Science 

Susan Gilbert 

NEW JERSEY 

UMDNJ—New Jersey Medical School 

Linda Hesselbirg 

NEW YORK 

University at Buffalo, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, 

State University of New York 

Patricia Simons 

PENNSYLVANIA 

Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine 

Roberta Wege 

TEXAS 

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, 

Southwestern Medical School 

Ann Wentz 

VIRGINIA 

University of Virginia School of Medicine 

Heather McCoy 


Alpha Omega Alpha visiting professorships, 2008/2009 

Beginning in 2002, Alpha Omega Alpha’s board of directors 

offered every chapter the opportunity to host a visiting 

professor. Fifty-one chapters took advantage of the opportunity 

during the 2007/2008 academic year to invite eminent 

persons in American medicine to share their varied perspectives 

on medicine and its practice. 

Following are the participating chapters, their councilors, 

and their visitors. 

ALABAMA 

University of Alabama School of Medicine, University of Alabama at 

Birmingham 

C. Bruce Alexander, MD, councilor 

Max Michael, MD 

University of South Alabama College of Medicine 

John B. Bass, Jr., MD, councilor 

Faith Fitzgerald, MD, University of California, Davis 

ARKANSAS 

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Medicine 

Anne T. Mancino, MD, councilor 

Deiter R. Enzmann, MD, UCLA 

CALIFORNIA 

University of California, Davis, School of Medicine 

Faith T. Fitzgerald, MD, councilor 

Howard I. Maibach, MD, University of California, San Francisco 

University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine 

Steven Z. Pantilat, MD, councilor 

Ethan Canin, MD, University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop 


Howard University College of Medicine 

Edward E. Cornwell III, MD, FACS, FCCM, councilor 

L.D. Britt, MD, Eastern Virginia Medical School 

FLORIDA 

University of Florida College of Medicine 

Heather Harrell, MD, councilor 

Jeffrey G. Wong, MD, Medical University of South Carolina 

University of Miami Miller School of Medicine 

Alex J. Mechaber, MD, FACP, councilor 

Daniel M. Becker, MD MPH, University of Virginia School of 

Medicine 

University of South Florida College of Medicine 

Patricia J. Emmanuel, MD, councilor 

Pamela W. Smith, MD, MPH, Center for Healthy Living and 

Longevity 

GEORGIA 

Morehouse School of Medicine 

Frances J. Dunston, MD, MPH, councilor 

Steven D. Freedman, MD, PhD 

ILLINOIS 


and Science 

Eric P. Gall, MD, MACP, MACR, councilor 

Leah J. Dickstein, MD, MA 

Southern Illinois University School of Medicine 

Andrew Varney, MD, councilor 

Kevin T. Hinchey, MD, Baystate Medical Center 

University of Chicago Division of the Biological Sciences Pritzker 


Holly J. Humphrey, MD, councilor 

Patrick O. Brown, MD, PhD, Stanford University 

INDIANA 

Indiana University School of Medicine 

Richard B. Gunderman, MD, PhD, councilor 

Edward Langston, MD 

IOWA 

University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine 

Christopher Cooper, MD, councilor 

John W. Edwards, MBA, Move Networks, Inc. 

KANSAS 

University of Kansas School of Medicine 

Jeffrey M. Holzbeierlein, MD, councilor 

Faith T. Fitzgerald, MD, University of California, Davis, School of 

Medicine 

LOUISIANA 

Louisiana State University School of Medicine at Shreveport 

Jeffrey German, MD, councilor 

Edwin A. Deitch, MD, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School 

Tulane University School of Medicine 

N. Kevin Krane, MD, councilor 

Stephen R. Mitchell, MD, MACP, FAAP, Georgetown University 


MASSACHUSETTS 

Tufts University School of Medicine 

Amy Lee, MD, councilor 

Bohdan Pomahac, MD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital 

MICHIGAN 

Wayne State University School of Medicine 

Mark B. Edelstein, MD, PhD, councilor 

Scott Litin, MD 

University of Michigan Medical School 

Cyril M. Grum, MD, councilor 

David T. Stern, MD, Mount Sinai School of Medicine of New York 

University 

MINNESOTA 

University of Minnesota Medical School—Twin Cities 

Charles Billington, MD, councilor 

John R. Wingard, MD, Bone Marrow Transplant Program, 

University of Florida Shands Cancer Center 

MISSOURI 

University of Missouri—Columbia School of Medicine 

Thomas Selva, MD, councilor 

Daniel H. Winship, MD, FACP, Secretary, Council of Medical 

Education, American Medical Association 

NEBRASKA 

Creighton University School of Medicine 

William J. Hunter, MD, councilor 

Gary L. Dunnington, MD, Southern Illinois University School of 

Medicine 

University of Nebraska College of Medicine 

Robert Wigton, MD, councilor 

PonJola Coney, MD, Virginia Commonwealth University School 

of Medicine 

NEVADA 

University of Nevada School of Medicine 

William A. Zamboni, MD, councilor 

John W. Pelley, PhD, Texas Tech University Health Science 

Center 

NEW JERSEY 

UMDNJ—New Jersey Medical School 

Robert A. Schwartz, MD, MPH, councilor 

Ralph A. O’Connell, MD, New York Medical College 


NEW YORK 

Albany Medical College 

Neil Lempert, MD, councilor 

Philip Greenland, MD, Director, Northwestern University 

Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute 

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons 

John C.M. Brust, MD, councilor 


New York Medical College 

William H. Frishman, MD, councilor 

Joseph Califano, Jr., the National Center on Addiction and 

Substance Abuse at Columbia University 

State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center College of 

Medicine 

Arthur H. Wolintz, MD, councilor 

Marc Goldstein, MD, FACS, Weill Cornell Medical College 

Stony Brook University Medical Center School of Medicine 

Jack Fuhrer, MD, councilor 

John Robbins, MD, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National 

Institute of Child Health and Human Development 

University at Buffalo, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, 

State University of New York 

Frank Schimpfhauser, PhD, councilor 

William F. Balistreri, MD, Children’s Hospital Medical Center 

Weill Cornell Medical College 

O. Wayne Isom, MD, councilor 

Allan H. Goroll, MD, FACP, Massachusetts General Hospital 

NORTH CAROLINA 

Wake Forest University Health Sciences (School of Medicine) 

K. Patrick Ober, MD, councilor 

Henry Epino, MD, Partners in Health, Rwanda 

OHIO 

Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine 

Denis Lunne, MD, councilor 

John W. Pelley, PhD, Texas Tech University Health Science 

Center 

Ohio State University College of Medicine 

Sheryl Pfeil, MD, councilor 

N. Joseph Espat, MD, Roger Williams Cancer Center, member of 

the AΩA board of directors 

Wright State University Boonschoft School of Medicine 

Linda Barney, MD, councilor 

Howard Brody, MD, PhD, University of Texas Medical Branch 

Institute for the Medical Humanities 

PENNSYLVANIA 

Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University 

Clara A. Callahan, MD, councilor 

Mark L. Tykocinski, MD, Jefferson Medical College 

Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine 

Robert G. Atnip, MD, councilor 

Daniel Shapiro, PhD, Pennsylvania State College of Medicine 

Temple University School of Medicine 

Amy Goldberg, MD, councilor 

Blase A. Carabello, MD, Baylor College of Medicine 

PUERTO RICO 

Ponce School of Medicine 

Iván Iriarte, MD, councilor 

Patricia W. Finn, MD, University of California, San Diego 

RHODE ISLAND 

The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University 

Charlotte M. Boney, MD, councilor 

Patricia K. Donahoe, MD, Harvard Medical School 

SOUTH CAROLINA 

University of South Carolina School of Medicine 

Joshua T. Thornhill IV, MD, councilor 


TENNESSEE 

East Tennessee State University James H. Quillen College of Medicine 

Martin Eason, MD, JD, councilor 

Bruce E. Woodworth, MD, University of Tennessee Medical 

Center 

University of Tennessee Health Science Center, College of Medicine 

Owen Phillips, MD, councilor 

Mark Hughes, MD, Genesis Genetics Institute, LLC 

TEXAS 

The Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine 

Mark L. Montgomery, MD, councilor 

Howard Brody, MD, PhD, University of Texas Medical Branch 

Institute for the Medical Humanities 



Kevin Klein, MD, councilor 

Philip A. Mackowiak, MD, VA Maryland Health Care System 

VIRGINIA 

Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine 

Gordon L. Archer, MD, councilor 

Mark Okusa, MD, FSN, University of Virginia Health Systems 

Department of Medicine 

WEST VIRGINIA 

Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine at Marshall University 

Bob L. Miller, MD, councilor 

John Glick, MD, The Joy Agency Escrow 

West Virginia University School of Medicine 

Melanie Fisher, MD, MSc, councilor 

Larry K. Pickering, MD, FAAP 


Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Student Service Project Awards, 2008/2009 

Begun in 1993 as the Chapter of the Year award, this 

program was intended to recognize outstanding contributions 

made by an AΩA chapter. In 1997, the program 

became the AΩA Chapter Development Awards, aimed at 

encouraging ongoing original and creative programs being 

carried out by AΩA chapters. In 2003, the program 

again changed to the AΩA Medical Student Service Project 

awards, which became an award available to any student or 

group or students at a school with an active AΩA chapter. 

Funds of up to $2000 per year, renewable for a second year at 

$1000 and a third year at $500, are available to students to aid 

in the establishment or expansion of a medical student service 

project benefiting a school or its local community. One application 

per year per school is allowed, selected by the school’s 

AΩA councilor and dean from the proposals submitted. 

Medical Student Service Projects funded by AΩA during 

the 2008/2009 school year were: 

CALIFORNIA 

Loma Linda University School of Medicine 

Books for San Bernardino Health Fair 

University of California, Davis, School of Medicine 

In the Grow 

University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine 

UC Irvine Lions’ Club Sight & Hearing Van Renovation 

FLORIDA 

University of Florida College of Medicine 

Annual Trot for Tots 5K Road Race 

University of Miami Miller School of Medicine 

Caring HeARTs; Sun Protection Fun (SPF) 

HAWAII 

University of Hawaii at Manoa John A. Burns School of Medicine 

JABSOM Health Fair 

ILLINOIS 

University of Chicago Division of the Biological Sciences Pritzker 


Asian-Pacific American Medical Student Association—Hepatitis B 

Awareness 

Pritzker Community Service Fellowship (second year) 

MASSACHUSETTS 

Boston University School of Medicine 

Haitian Youth Education Program 

MINNESOTA 

Mayo Medical School 

Winter Warmth Festival 

NEW YORK 

Mount Sinai School of Medicine of New York University 

6th Annual Mount Sinai Community Health Fair 

The Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education of the City College 

of New York 

Health Fair in Harlem 


Medicine 

Brooklyn Free Clinic 


Weill Cornell Youth Scholars Program 


University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine 

UNC Craniofacial Center—Spanish resources 

OHIO 

Wright State University Boonschoft School of Medicine 

Remote Consultation and Surgical Care of Burn Patients in 

Underserved Populations 

PENNSYLVANIA 

Temple University School of Medicine 

Web site for Epsilon Chapter of AΩA at Temple University School of 

Medicine 

RHODE ISLAND 

The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University 

SNMA Annual Health Fair (second year) 

TENNESSEE 

East Tennessee State University James H. Quillen College of Medicine 

Trot for Tots 5K Race 

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine 

Shade Tree Family Clinic 

WEST VIRGINIA 

West Virginia University School of Medicine 

Teen Reproductive Health Community Outreach Program 

2009 Alpha Omega Alpha Helen H. 

Glaser Student Essay Awards 

The twenty-seventh annual Alpha Omega Alpha Helen H. 

Glaser Student Essay awards were made in May of this 

year. This year’s winners are: 

First prize, $2000: Anna Raphael, MD, of the Class of 2009 

at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine for her essay, 

“The Ethics of Cosmetic Enhancement.” 

Second prize, $750: Andrew Radu, MD, of the Class of 

2009 at Jefferson Medical College for his essay, “Eudaimonia, 

Existentialism, and the Practice of Medicine.” 

Third prize, $500: Purushottam Achyut Nagarkar of the 

Class of 2010 at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical 

Center at Dallas Southwestern Medical School for his essay, 

“Getting Drug Money Out of Doctors’ Offices.” 

Honorable mentions, $250 each: Crystal Bowe of the Class 

of 2010 at the Brody School of Medicine at the University of 

North Carolina for her essay, “Josiah”; Ryan Darby of the Class 

of 2011 at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine for his 

essay, “Ethical Issues in Cognitive Enhancement”; and Steven 

Quinn of the Class of 2012 at Northwestern University’s 

Feinberg School of Medicine for his essay, “The Effect of 

Gchat Deprivation on Medical Student Productivity: A Case 

Study.” 


Alpha Omega Alpha Volunteer Clinical 

Faculty Awards, 2008/2009 

The Alpha Omega Alpha Volunteer Clinical Faculty Award 

is presented annually by local chapters to recognize community 

physicians who have contributed with distinction to 

the education and training of medical students. AΩA provide 

a permanent plaque for each chapter’s dean’s office; a plate 

with the name of each year’s honoree may be added each year 

that the award is given. Honorees receive framed certificates. 

The recipients of this award in the 2008/2009 academic year 

are listed below. 

ALABAMA 

University of South Alabama College of Medicine 

Terry A. Kurtts, MD 

ILLINOIS 


and Science 

Richard M. Ahuja, MD 

INDIANA 

Indiana University School of Medicine 

R.T. Buck Beeler, MD 

MASSACHUSETTS 

University of Massachusetts Medical School 

William Shine, MD 

MICHIGAN 

University of Michigan Medical School 

Anne Frantz, MD 

NEW YORK 

New York Medical College 

Ronald Weissman, MD 

New York University School of Medicine 

Charles G. Hazzi, MD 


Medicine 

Mark H. Jackson, MD 

University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry 

Teresa J. Chang, MD 


Morton D. Bogdonoff, MD 

OHIO 

Ohio State University College of Medicine 

Dana Vallangeon, MD 

University of Cincinnati College of Medicine 

Kurt Froehlich, MD 

PENNSYLVANIA 

Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University 

Melvin L. Moses, MD 


University of South Carolina School of Medicine 

Jimmy Pacheco-Perez, MD 

TEXAS 



Sharon Lee Wiener, MD 

!"#$%&'$()*'%+,%&$()-./+'0)) 

%&)1$&0)!%'23)4+50)6778 

A boy slips from his swing, 

a fall, a FOOSH, a Colles’ fracture, 

angulated and ugly, excruciating, 

so very fixable. He holds it up and 

away; the unnatural S of his wrist 

curls in question. 

A crowd gathers, staring, 

sighing, sucking in lips over 

bottom teeth. You smile at the boy, 

drape a towel over his odd arm. 

A distraction, really, but it’s enough. 

The crowd wanders back 

to their Frisbees and ice cream. 

The boy cradles his wrist, watches 

hard your every move. He studies 

the towel’s rough weave, picks 

at the loops of thread, asks: 

Are you going to do the magic trick now? 

You stop cold. 

You think of what comes next: 

emergency room, x-rays, reduction, cast, 

instructions. A simple fix, really. But he 

believes in you, that you will whisk the towel 

away and he will wave his arm, whole and 

straight in goodbye. 

For a minute, maybe you believe it, too. 

You leave the towel draped. 

You lift the boy into the ambulance. 

You ease slowly towards the hospital. 

You and the boy rest nestled 

While there is still time to believe. 

Christina Crumpecker 

Ms. Crumpecker is a member of the Class of 2011 at the 

University of Colorado School of Medicine. This poem won 

honorable mention in the 2009 Pharos Poetry Competition. 

Her address is: 6105 S. Parker Road #2303, Centennial, Colorado 

80016. E-mail: christina.crumpecker@ucdenver.edu. 

48 The Pharos/Autumn 2009 

Laura Aitken

!"#$%&' 

We call him “John”— 

at first by accident 

but then by birthright. 

We tear skin from fat to the shining muscle 

and run our scalpels beneath sheaths of tissue. 

Rougher at times, we break ligaments 

and crack through bone. 

We are the most thorough of vultures, 

prying him open with steel talons, 

pressing our gloved fingertips, 

and leaving our brutal mark. 

John, we forget 

you were like us— 

when we resurface to our lives 

and breathe in the laughter of our days, 

it is so much easier that way. 

We are learning and sometimes 

the parts outnumber the whole. 

Call us merciless scholars— 

that is how each of us starts, 

inspecting bodies like lines 

of verse upon a metal tablet. 

But in our recklessness we will remember, 

now and then, what was once common to us, 

and before we finish our day’s work, 

we will gently settle your bones back into place, 

resting femur to tibia, letting condyles meet. 

Cheng Tou 

Ms. Tou is a member of the Class of 2011 at the Sophie Davis 

School of Biomedical Education/SUNY Stony Brook School of 

Medicine. This poem won honorable mention in the 2009 Pharos 

Poetry Competition. The author’s e-mail address is: ctou86@ 

gmail.com. 


Alpha Omega Alpha members 

elected in 2008/2009 

Chapters are listed alphabetically by state, province, or country, then in order of charter 

ALABAMA 

University of Alabama School of Medicine, University of Alabama at 

Birmingham—Alpha Alabama 

Students: Christopher James Compton, Jonathan Allen Dean, Joshua Franklin Dixon, 

Jennifer Katherine Durst, Caitlin Brianne Halverson, Cynthia Ellis Hill, Mark Logan 

Hill, David Alexander Jackson, Jonathan Kelsie Jennings, Virginia Louise Jones, Selma 

Zukic Kominek, William Russell May Jr, Ashlee Hope McQueen, Andrew Mitchell 

Nunn, Jayendrakumar Shantilal Patel, John Keith Roberts, Cheryl H Robertson, 

Scott Andrew Sarrels, Jumin Sunde, Brentley Richard Taylor, Jeffrey C Thompson, 

Melanie Monroe Venable, Joshua Crocker Waits, Kathryn Nicole Weaver, Alexander 

C Whitley, Timothy Alphonzo Williams, Rebecca C Wylie 

Alumni: William Michael Hall, George Martin Solomon 

Faculty: James H Willig, Parekha Yedla 

House staff: Kerri Sparks Bevis, Shannon A Bryant, Alicia C Vogt 

University of South Alabama College of Medicine—Beta Alabama 

Students: Jason Douglas Brazelton, Amber Klaraonna Brown, Kristin Diane Flowers, 

James Richard Frost, Haley Brooke Hallman, George Augustus Nelson IV, Sarah 

Silver Payne, Daniel Russell Robinson, John Robert Ross, Jennifer Cannon Sykora, 

Scott T Watson 

Alumni: Robert Aland Levin 

Faculty: R Michael Culpepper 

House staff: Stephen Wayne Landreneau 

ARIZONA 

University of Arizona College of Medicine—Alpha Arizona 

Students: Nataliya Biskup, Joy Elizabeth Bulger, Michelle Catherine Burke, Courtney 

Castoro, Scott Morris Cheney, Andrew C Duarte, Jacob Stephen Feldman, Lida 

Pamela Hariri, Christina Hayhurst, Zachary Piazza Kahler, Amber Clare May, Payam 

Vali Morgan, Thomas Jonathan Jackson Oberg, Jessica Casas Reedy, Robert Wayne 

Ricciotti, Ali M Rkein, Tara A Saunders, Emily Marie Schaaf, Sierra Christine Wolter 

Alumni: Vincent Mark Kresha, Tracey Lynn Kurtzman, David Andrew Pedersen 

Faculty: Sean P Elliott, Glen Yo Kishi 

House staff: Mark Andrew Brown, Derek A Merrill 

ARKANSAS 

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Medicine—Alpha 

Arkansas 

Students: Rami O Almefty, Ross Michael Blagg, John White Bracey, Allison Jane 

Burbank, Megan Marie Chang, Jonathan Telfer Clark, Dana Jo Coker, Lynn Marie 

Davis, Brita Sward Deacon, George William Deimel IV, Kristen Mitchell Dishongh, 

Amy Melissa Dossey, Nicole Elizabeth Frederick, David Powell Hayes, James Luther 

Head, Scott Kerwin Hudson, Thomas Alan Jennings, Lauren Nicole Leach, Nathanael 

David McLeod, Kurt James Messer, Evan Neil Newbolt, Jonathan Andrew Reding, 

Danielle Renee Sterrenberg, Cathryn Joyce Vadala, Andrew Gordon West, Deidre 

Lynn Wyrick 

Alumni: Chadwick Taylor Rodgers 

Faculty: James Neville Pasley, Gerald Bradley Schaefer 

House staff: Jamie Ladd Burton, Lakisha Lynn Lee, Daniel Ray Young 

CALIFORNIA 

University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine—Alpha 

California 

Students: Ramon Francisco Barajas, Christine Lea Bottrell, Molly Martin Burnett, 

Brook Anne Calton, Sarah Elizabeth Cipriano, Sanket Shishir Dhruva, Laura Beth 

Epstein, Angela Marie Feraco, Melissa Madeleine Fitch, Katherine Kinder Gregg, 

Christopher Robert Jones, Daniel Hyun Kim, Megan Irene Loring, Rebecca Gwynee 

Maine, Kevin E Marsee, Jessica Christine Myers, Ryan George O’Malley, Maya Liv 

Petersen, Matthew James Roosevelt, David Lawrence Stahl, Sam Van Truong, Brynn 

Jessica Utley, Aruna Venkatesan, Darcy Alison Wooten 

Alumni: Herbert Gene Hern, Susan Runyan 

Faculty: Christopher Childers Stewart, Daniel M Wlodarczyk 

House staff: Gabriel Martin Ortiz, Read G Pierce, Sarah B Wilson 

Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California—Gamma 

California 

Students: Lawrence Francis Borges Jr, Laurie Leigh Brunette, Julie Catherine Burnett, 

Eisha Anne Christian, Julia Lucia Cormano, Brett Cronin, Cambria Leigh Garell, 

Anne James Goldsberry, Gregory Henderson, Alexander Robert Jack, Kali Rose Luker, 

Rojeh Melikian, Ronen Nazarian, Ardalan Alen Nourian, Kathryn White Russell, 

Thuzar Myo Shin, Brendan McCluskey Smith, Christopher Forrest Thompson, 

Christopher Arthur Tokin, Eric Brendan Tygenhof, Rebecca Wolk 

Faculty: Eric Hsieh 

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA—Delta California 

Students: Jennifer Ahdout, Michelle Yvonne Arnold, Justin Harris Barad, Maria K 

Berkman, Meenakshi Bhasin, Cherie Cerella Cross, Trenton Drew Custis, Valerie 

Rae Davis, Luu Cortes Doan, Ersne Eromo, Casey Andrew Grover, Mitchell Thor 

Gudmundsson, Nicole Kalani Hetzer, Margaret Hsu, Brittany Joy Kazmierski, Sheila 

Krishna, Jennifer Ciewann Lau, Elizabeth Nguyen Le, Ana Lopez-O’Sullivan, Mish 

Mizrahi, Aarti Rani Puri, Javay Monique Ross, Laura Tochen, Linh Le Tran, Maureen 

Veronica Villasenor, Uwais Zaid 

Loma Linda University School of Medicine—Epsilon California 

Students: Shelley A Caltharp, Chansa Cha, Danielle M Chan, Eric Chicheung Chow, 

Kimberly Elyse Conley, Michael Anthony Davis, Michelle Love Sellona Donton, Lisal 

Stevens Folsom, Heidi Kristina Forberg, Matthew Aaron Hiersche, Matthew Douglas 

Higgins, Ryan Hsi, Sarah Marie Korando, LaVonne Marie Meadows, Patrick Seong 

Moon, Steven Edward Munson, Bjorn Karl Peterson, David Michael Plunkett, Daniel 

Andrew Poon, Amber Kathleen Sabbatini, Jessica Jennifer Sutton, Daniel Torres, 

Zachary Peter Vandegriend, Aaron Eugene Wagner, Benjamin Winarko, Olivia Chen 

Winarko 

Faculty: David Kelvin Bland 

House staff: Joseph Marshall Bowen, Chad Marc Harbour 

University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine—Zeta California 

Students: Stephanie Yajai Channual, Lauren Cheung, Cristina Renee Clause, Molly 

Rebecca Deane, Shilpa Gattu, Jason Hyunsoo Lee, Janet M Lim, Jamie Maria 

McGuire, Miriam Naqvi, Joseph Michael Pirolo, Neera Sodhi, Kimberly Sue Stone, 

Emily Liu Wang 

University of California, Davis, School of Medicine—Eta California 

Students: Neal Maxwell Berger, Elizabeth Hayden Brannan, Nicolas Dimitri Brown, 

Tatiana Catanzarite, Cynthia Joy Chambers, Erin Rae Glenn, Joseph Patrick Henry, 

Albert Lu, Ryan Adams Metcalf, Bobeck Sam Modjtahedi, Elizabeth Nakamura, 

Christine Osterhout, Mondhipa Ratnarathorn, Balvinder Renu Rehal, Conor Schaye, 

Albert Truong 


Alumni: Timothy Eugene Albertson 

Faculty: G Patrick Daubert, Karnjit Johl 

COLORADO 

University of Colorado School of Medicine—Alpha California 

Students: Rola Atiyah Altoos, Taghrid A Altoos, Dale Bevans Cassidy, Melinda Chanel 

Cushing, Brandy Delane Drake, Brian Early Driver, Nassrene Yousef Elmadhun, 

Ryan James Fante, Lisa Sue Foley, Aaron Edward Kornblith, Scott Edward Mann, 

Bradley Clark Nelson, Anna Tagmo Neumeier, Neil Thomas Phippen, Marlin Dustin 

Richardson, Susan Jane Ripper, Esperanza Felicita Salazar, Toby Oliver Steele, Daniel 

Eugene Swanson, Gregory Jay Wing, Lucy Elizabeth Zumwinkle 


The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health 

Sciences—Alpha District of Columbia 

Students: Cameron Keith Berg, Laura Jean Berg, Niraj Bhalakia, Nirali Bhatt, 

Kathleen Chiotos, Jeremiah Davis, Amy G Fiedler, Kevin Gibbs, Jill Gibson, Jamie 

Farrah Gilberg, Jennifer Brooke Goldstein, Stephanie Jacks, Matthew Lewis, Kelly 

Martin, Marsha Dore Mitchum, Amar Singh Narula, Maryam Nazemzadeh, 

Yevgeniya Nusinovich, Nitin J Patel, Vivek Vinay Patil, Arun Rajaram, Dominique Lan 

Rash, Erich John Renner, Jonathan Roberts, Christopher Ian Scott, Sarah Wartman, 

Steven Jonathan Weissbart 

Faculty: Christina Marie Puchalski, Katalin Roth 

House staff: Guillermo Jose Ballarino, Katherine Lynne Garland, Dean Mark Kirkel 

Georgetown University School of Medicine—Beta District of Columbia 

Students: Michael Richard Acord, Matthew Will Beuchel, Jason Robert Biehl, 

Nicholas Benjamin Caruana, Garrett Matthew Chinn, Brett Austin Collander, Mihir 

Jitendra Desai, Jacob Louis Freeman, Ryan Barton Gerecht, Leanne Rita Griffin, Lisa 

Carey Grossman, Glenn Jerome Hanna, Barry Glenn Hansford, Kristen Ann Hudak, 

Richard Reza Jahan-Tigh, Katherine Bennett Jones, Lawrence Stephen Long Jr, 

Grant William Mallory, Trevor Charles McIver, Lindsay Anne Meijer, Andrew David 

Nicholson, Melissa Jane Nicosia, Kari Lynne Oftedal, Mona Leigh Rezai, Patrick 

Christopher Schottel, Ryan Shanahan, Bridget Aurora Sinnott, Justin Wing Lun Tong, 

Lisa Marie Vann, Diego Vicente 

House staff: David Anthony Bruno, Krit Kitisin 

Howard University College of Medicine—Gamma District of Columbia 

Students: Soraya Ally, Rishi Balkissoon, Enoch Elie Faustin, Abreham B Feleke, 

Giuliana Patricia Geng, Michael Martin Buford Green, Naishai Renee Herrin, Frantz 

R Lerebours, Daniel E Mansour, Menarvia K Nixon, Ifeoma Yvonne Nwaneri, Neil 

K Roy, Martin Ucanda, Michael Waudo Wangia, Katreena Ayana Whitted, Gregory 

Vernon Williams 

Alumni: Billie MW Adams 

Alumni: Consuelo Hopkins Wilkins, Wayne Alex Ian Frederick 

House staff: Cindy Nicole Bowen, Winoah Anya Henry, Monique Margareta Tim 

Powell-Davis 

FLORIDA 

University of Miami Miller School of Medicine—Alpha Florida 

Students: Rachel Hannah Bardowell, Liat N Corcia, Kenneth Matthew Crandall, 

Yehuda Ethan Deutsch, Arieh Lev Fox, Esther Danielle Garazi, Jamie Nicole Graddy, 

Charles H Kim, Jennifer Renai King, Kimberly D Koppenbrink, Jack Louro, Timothy 

Philip Love, Tahira Mathen, Edward Mezerhane, Rajiv Indar Nijhawan, Harsh 

Chittaranjan Patel, Kevin Michael Perry, Raj Suresh Rajpara, Jessica Ellyn Ravikoff, 

Robert S Reznik, Jennifer Elise Runco, Nasheer Azeem Sachedina, Michael Ian 

Shiman, Clayton Michael Smith, Jayanth S Sridhar, Sarah Anne Stechschulte, Derek 

Daniel Ulvila, Soham Suketu Vakil, Nupur Verma 

Alumni: Robert S Kirsner, Edgar Joseph Pierre 

Faculty: Maureen Helen Lowery, Carla Lupi 

House staff: Richard Michael Dreize, Haneen Salilh Yasin 

University of Florida College of Medicine—Beta Florida 

Students: James Robert Barron, Erica Acosta Bartelt, Casey Beal, Christina Ann 

Brezing, Farokh Rustom Demehri, Benjamin Holcombe, Amanda Kay Hooper, Megan 

Lee Johnson, Hannah Louise Keirnes, Pui Y Lee, Jessica Sun Liao, Peter Milano, 

Andrew Frederick Miller, Eunice Pae, Timothy Devon Replogle, Travis Dennis 

Richardson, Elissa Anne Rosen, Philip Oliver Scumpia, Bradley Swinson, David 

Qiyuan Wang 

Faculty: Michael Good, Abraham Joseph Layon 

House staff: David Alberto Iglesias 

University of South Florida College of Medicine—Gamma Florida 

Students: Trevor Born, Hope Angela Bueller, Hugh Davis, David Eliot Goldner, 

Melissa Grillo, Douglas Ivancsits, Erika Johnson, Jessica Keshishian, Christopher 

Koltz, Coren Menendez, Mark Oldham, Salma Pothiawala, Chad Geroge Rusthoven, 

David A Sallman, Jessica Teav, Veronica Tucci, Marie Vasher, Gwennaelle Armelle 

Wilson, Charlotte Z Woods-Hill 

Faculty: John Dillon Carter, Charurut Somboonwit 

House staff: Raymond Glenn Cutro Jr 

Florida State University College of Medicine—Delta Florida 

Students: Shawn Agee, Corinne N Brann, Elving Colon, Leslie Davis-Singletary, Eboni 

Malkia Ellis, H William Higgins II, Shannon Nottingham Hill, Mary Ann Johnson, 

Christina Blue Marquez, Jennifer Maziad, Becky McGilligan, Kristen Beth Morrell, 

Stephen Charles Viel 

Faculty: Michael Joseph Muszynski 

GEORGIA 

Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine—Alpha Georgia 

Students: Neil Amin, Jeremy R Anthony, Jessica Nicole Bentley, Emily Bland, Hans 

Carlson, Colleen E. Cherry, Kent J. Delay, William Linwood Emerson, Felicia Carolyn 

Fountain, Jeffrey H Goldberg, Mark Robert Green, Stephen Marshal Miles Hawkins, 

Kristen Leigh Herrick, Leslie F. Horn, Gregory D Kalv, Sunny Singh Khichi, Robert 

Andrew Lehn, Robin Nicole Ligler, Shinko Koko Lin, Jillian Erin Martell, Farzad 

Ali Masroor, Yosuke Nomura, Lavanya Parachuru, William Patrick Parker, Sarita 

Ashokkumar Patel, Jeremy Jacob Prine, Kendall Hugh Rader, Cheryl Esther Reese, 

Jena Jo Taylor, Weston T. Waxweiler, Karen Leigha Zimowski 

Faculty: Janis Strickland Coffin 

House staff: Nojan Valadi 

Emory University School of Medicine—Beta Georgia 

Students: Laura Elizabeth Agnew, Ian Brear Campbell, Sharon Elizabeth Engel, 

Brandon Kenneth Fornwalt, Justin Stanley Gordon, Meredith Louise Holtz, Richard 

Benjamin Johnson, Jesse Jeno Jung, Nicole Leigh Kansier, Erin Wyatt Kinney, David 

Mitchell Marcus, Megan Jean McKee, Rachel Laura Medbery, Katharine Fowler 

Moore, Robert Francis Murphy, Elenore Elizabeth Patterson, Ximena Alexandra 

Pinell, Marae Bernard Shewmaker, Adam B Shrewsberry, Malcolm Hart Squires, 

Breanne Elizabeth Terakedis, Francesca Jessica Weiss, John Hiram Woodruff 

Faculty: H Jean Khoury, Carl Vincent Washington 

House staff: Avani Patel Ingley, Karen Lee-Lin Law, Andrew Page 

Morehouse School of Medicine—Gamma Georgia 

Students: Stacey Michelle Cobb, Jacqueline Faulkner, Pavan Kavali, Opeyemi Elaine 

Lamikanra, Sophia K Mirza, Snehal Ghanshyam Patel, Heidi Ty Woessner, Faresa 

Zarreen 

Mercer University School of Medicine—Delta Georgia 

Students: Amanda M Evans, Heidi Jane Hendricker, Bradley Adam Hobbs, George 

Pittman Hotz, Robert Lloyd Lott, Timothy Justin Osborne, Neal Patrick Passante, 

Samuel Perry Robinson, Steven Schaeffer Spires 

Alumni: Bruce Taylor Burns, Henry Edward Roberts 

Faculty: James McGuire Cunningham, Erskine Anthony James 

House staff: Andrew Perry Bozeman, Marie Owsley Easterlin, Vincent Carl Scoglietti 

III 

HAWAII 

University of Hawaii at Manoa John A Burns School of Medicine—Alpha 

Hawaii 

Students: Hazel Lim Abinsay, Daniel Chee-ing Cheng, Keith C Errecart, Aimee 

Malia Grace, Maxine Alexis Karimoto, Briana J Lau, Katie R M Linskey, Lauren Nitta 

Maeda, Carrie S Marshall, Kristyn Mieko Kitabayashi Nishimoto, Sheri Michiko 

Shimizu 

Alumni: Wendell K S Foo, Sandy Miyono Tsuhako 

Faculty: Marian Elizabeth Melish, Seiji Yamada 

House staff: David Inouye, Ryon Nakasone, Kelly Setsuko Yamasato 

ILLINOIS 

University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine—Alpha Illinois 

Students: Ambar Atta Afshar, Osmanuddin Ahmed, Thomas Ryan Alcorn, Asma 

Arayan, Jason John Carroll, Kristen Ann Chambers-Damm, JoEllen Sedlack Channon, 

Luke Alexander Falesch, Rebecca Marguerite Garza, Melissa Marie Grunloh, Ellen 

Therese Haas, Alina Huang, Andrea Hui, Bridget Kampman, Jonathan Robert 

Manning Kaplan, Elham Karamooz, Lana Nour Kashlan, David Ung Kim, Nikki Na 

Yoen Kim, Hannah Koh, Baia Jasmine Lasky, Judy Z T Liu, Jessica Danielle Madden, 

Beeran Meghpara, Adam Meisel, Arya Mohabbat, Christopher H Moore, Raghuveer 

Muppavarapu, Sahar Nadimi, Alexander Rudolph Orem, Evan Charles Osmundson, 

Alison Palumbo, Kevin Patel, Nalini Rajagopal, Yoona Rhee, Melissa Richard, Esther 

Ro, Brent Aaron Rocke, David Rodriguez, Mark Nathan Rubin, Michael John Ryan, 

Andrew Sapthavee, John Christopher Selby, Nandan Shah, Scott E Sheehan, Deepa 

Sheth, Mark Patrick Smyth, Adam Nathan Wallace, Nichole Elizabeth Wiepert, James 

Anthony Wrzosek, Jennifer Yeh, John-Paul Jaewoon Yu 

University of Chicago Division of the Biological Sciences Pritzker School of 

Medicine—Beta Illinois 

Students: Faraz Shafique Ahmad, Regina-Celeste Shahnaz Ahmad, Karen Lynn Bauer, 

Alexandra Briggs, Nadieska Caballero, Patrick Dillon, Ryan T Foley, Vanitha Isaac 

Johnson, Neena Kapoor, Ross Kessler, Shakirat Omolara Oyetunji, Riddhi Patel, 


New members, 2008/2009 

Lindsay Ann Petty, Jami Rothe, Talya Salant, Mark Timothy Silvestri, Shashank 

Shekhar Sinha, Ramsey Tate, Ramsey Tate, Timothy Paul Vanderbilt 

Alumni: Douglass B Given, Kim Allan Williams 

Faculty: Vineet Arora, Poj Lysouvakon 

House staff: Mukta Vasant Katdare, Arjmand Rasool Mufti 

Northwestern University, The Feinberg School of Medicine—Gamma Illinois 

Students: Gregory B Auffenberg, Kristin Berona, Natasha D Bosma, Thomas 

S Brinton, Benjamin Chen, Sabeen Dhand, Raymond Hah, Poonam Laxmappa 

Hosamani, Sunil Kapur, Lauren Elizabeth Kerr, Sadiya Sana Khan, Jared Wilson Klein, 

Melissa Marinelli, Amanda Kate Marma, Neha Mehta, Anne Katherine Mongiu, 

David Page, Jonathan Park, Brian William Patterson, Vinay Rawlani, Anne Elizabeth 

Scott, Eric Alexander Secemsky, Shivani Manoj Shah, Saranya Srinivasan, Debasish 

Sundi, Jonathan Michael Tresley, Gustavo Eduardo Velasquez, Anita Prakash Vin 

Alumni: Edward Shingo Ogata, Reed Omary 

Faculty: Patrick M McCarthy, Douglas Vaughan 

House staff: Sarah McGann Donlan, Clara Filice, Matthew Harinstein 

Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and 

Science—Delta Illinois 

Students: Blake Vance Acohido, Farnaz Khosh Aghideh, Shelly Barnes, Adam 

Herman Bauer, Amy Charlotte Boudreau, Steven Benjamin Carr, Tammy Chen, David 

Zen Chow, Merrit Marion DeBartolo, Anisiia T Doytchinova, Andrew Josef Fink, 

Robert Freed, Cyle S Goodman, Aliya Sabrina Hasham, Lee Anne Jasper, Yashar 

Javidan, Brian James Klika, Christopher Lawrence Kramer, Amanda Lee Livingston, 

Jillian Shane Main, Matthew David Maxwell, Heidi Rose Morris, Pikul Bhupendra 

Patel, Niloufar Paydar-Darlan, Ajay Aroor Rao, Lauren Ashley Ross, Amanda Beth 

Rostkowski, Eric Joseph Schenk, Mahdie Seyed, Robert Toroussian, Samantha 

Winsor, Wendy W Wong 

Alumni: Philip Bruce Dray, Theresa Kepic 

Faculty: David Anthony Garfield, Stuart Kiken 

House staff: Sasikanth Adigopula, Umee Davae, Nishant B Jalandhara 

Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine—Epsilon Illinois 

Students: Ian D Augustin, John Matthew Binder, Christina E Boots, Kara Anne 

Brogan, Brian David Dalm, Erin Louise Doren, Michael Ginsburg, Ross Andrew 

Gliniecki, William Adrian Hall, Chase Michael Heaton, Estelle Claire Kahn, Lia 

Kaufman, Matthew James Koster, Austine Marie Kuder, Jennifer Marie Lavin, 

Marlana Mun-Yun Li, Nathaniel Reid Little, Ryan Patrick Morton, David Kenneth 

Myer, Katie Lynne O’Sullivan, Danielle Marie Riccardi, Kevin James Rycyna, Jeffrey 

Raymond SooHoo, Joshua James Thom, Abigail Duncan Winder 

Faculty: Vikram Clifford Prabhu 

House staff: Devyani Lal, Christopher D McClung, David King Mikolyzk 

Rush Medical College of Rush University Medical Center—Zeta Illinois 

Students: Astha Agrawal, Jill Christina Anderson, Danny Bega, Jonathan Cheponis, 

Michelle Therese Chevalier, Matthew Spencer Currie, Lesley McMurry Felsten, 

Brian Christopher Goss, Diana Appolonia Guse, Bradley Jason Hewlett, Silas John 

Hoxie, Christian R Malalis, Rachel R Osborn, Courtney Marie Pigott, Carly Elizabeth 

Seaberg, Alexander Noor Shoushtari, Jessica Suzanne Sinnott, Dorothy Jeanne Todt, 

Andrea Dawn Toulson, Elizabeth Ann Weldon 

Southern Illinois University School of Medicine—Eta Illinois 

Students: Sofya Helena Asfaw, Martha Lynn Hlafka, Matthew Charles Johnson, Heath 

Aaron Laughlin, Gina Marie Paulauskis, Drew Campbell Peterson, Sania S Raza, Neal 

Daniel Rushforth, Ashley Michelle Starwalt, Joshua Aaron Turner, Lacey Lea Ufkes 

Alumni: Rebecca Lynn Johnson 

Faculty: Reuben Allen Bueno Jr 

House staff: Damon Sean Cooney, Christine Susan Hwang, Nishith K Singh 

INDIANA 

Indiana University School of Medicine—Alpha Indiana 

Students: Christi Ann Arnerich, Maggie Kathleen Benson, Ryan Thomas Borne, Jared 

E Boyd, Timothy Brandon Campbell, Apoorva Chawla, Lori A Clark, Julie Marie 

Clary, Leah D Craft, Radhika B Dave, Benjamin Russell Felix, Kevin Donald Hardt, 

Ryan Kristopher Harrison, Brandon Jeffrey Hayes, Matthew Aaron Hazzard, John 

H Holden, Matthew M Jones, Emily Catherine Keller, Kathryn T Wannemuehler 

Lannert, Matthew James Locker, Justin Scott Malenkos, Andrew S McDaniel, 

Matthew Jordan Miller, Joshua R Mitchell, Vivianne Carole Montgrain, Roger H 

Morse, John William Nay, Cassandra Corinne Neureiter, Dustin Lee Norton, Randy 

Phillip Orr, Laura Maureen Pezzuto, Michael Robert Polin, Aparna Raj, Lauren C 

Rakes, Caroline Elizabeth Rouse, Laila F Saied, Jesse J Savage, Sunny Schaeuble, 

Zachary J Tempel, Christopher James Therasse, Sean M Thompson, Richard Jason 

VonDerHaar, Chad Heidt Weaver, Sarah Carlson Yamaguchi, Daniel Alberto Yelfimov, 

David Adam Zopf 

Alumni: Mathew Reppert Galvin 

Faculty: Stephen Paul Bogdewic, John Joseph Coleman III 

House staff: John Daniel Abad, David Creighton Rissing 

IOWA 

University of Iowa Roy J and Lucille A Carver College of Medicine—Alpha 

Iowa 

Students: Aaron Timothy Althaus, Bret Dwight Alvis, Julie Ann Ames, Eric John 

Askeland, Philip Chen, Elizabeth Marie Damstetter, Stephanie Ann Egts, Jessica 

Anne Enns, Norah Anne Foster, Jennifer Jane Halbesleben, Ryan Hegg, Roya Ijadi- 

Maghsoodi, Jenna Kubat, Anna Marie Marcinow, John James McAnelly, Gary Rex 

Nelson, Aaron Michael O’Brien, Grant Peterson, Heather Pontasch, Steven William 

Purtle, Jay Frederick Rilinger, James Benjamin Robbins, Derek James Robinson, Erica 

Christine Savage, Amy Beth Schminke, Alynna Kristen Schulert, Matthew Sutton, 

Melissa Lynne Yeats, Tameem Mahmoud Yehyawi, Adam Ziemann 

Alumni: Corrine M Ganske 

Faculty: Patricia Kirby 

KANSAS 

University of Kansas School of Medicine—Alpha Kansas 

Students: Justin Robert Bond, Caleb J Bowers, Bruce Allan Bowser, Christian Patrick 

Conderman, Erica Jean Red Corn, Stephanie Dobler, Bethany Enoch, Timothy James 

Fendler, Melissa Kay Garber, Stefanie Michelle Green, Michael Thomas Hagan, 

Bridget LeeAnn Harrison, Anita Anjali Hegde, Jeremiah Robert Kempke, Ryan D 

LaSota, Robert Benjamin Legler, Christopher S Liverman, Shriti Masrani, Sean M 

O’Neill, Adam Jacob Obley, Kimberlee Dian Reetz, Cole P Ritchie, Luke Spencer- 

Gardner, Emily Stevens, Laura Ann Thomas, Daniel Aaron West, Laura Christine 

Westfall, Zachary Allen Winter, Joseph Raymond Zenisek 

Alumni: Gary Christopher Doolittle, Melissa Leigh Parkhurst 

Faculty: Kevin Michael Mulhern 

House staff: Ryan B Hays, Kevin Kyle Raymer, Jeremy R Schue 

KENTUCKY 

University of Louisville School of Medicine—Alpha Kentucky 

Students: Nabeel Azeem, James Bell, Brandon C Cain, Johnathan Casey, Joshua 

Jeffrey Christensen, Angela Marie Cox, Troy Austin Davis, Jenna Leigh Dismore, 

Laura Elizabeth Dries, Stephanie Nicole Grant, Lauren Holt Jackson, William Scott 

Jones, Denis Jusufbegovic, Brian Walter Kaebnick, Ganesh K Kartha, Daniel Bruce 

Kischnick, Stephanie Lynn Logsdon, Beth Nicole McNulty, Landen Alan Meeks, 

Jeffrey Mark Meyer, Mary Scott Roberts, Hannah Marie Ryan, Kasey Rae Strothman, 

William Lee Titsworth, Amy Lynn Yancey, Sarah Zaheer, Jennifer Allison Zeliger 

Faculty: Kristine Joy Krueger, Richard Redinger 

House staff: Purva Gopal, Yasmeen Shaw, Anthony Russell Theile 

University of Kentucky College of Medicine—Beta Kentucky 

Students: Joshua Lee Carter, Bethany Carol Cox, Ben Elitzur, Katherine Freedman, 

Hillary M Harper, Matthew Ryan Luckett, Joseph Wilson Owen, Yasmin Khan 

Parrish, Gregory Luther Repass, Tandy S Repass, Jay Naresh Shah, Alexis Vien 

LEBANON 

American University of Beirut School of Medicine—Alpha Lebanon 

Students: Faysal Saadallah Haroun, Anthony Elias Tannous 

Alumni: Habib Abbas Dakik 

House staff: Faek Rashid Jamali, Zeinab Fawzi Saleh 

LOUISIANA 

Tulane University School of Medicine—Alpha Louisiana 

Students: Christi Anne Baker, Jill Tanenbaum Cierny, Lauren Elizabeth Fritz, 

Debbie Ann Fromstein, Andrea Driscoll Germond, Ryan David Goff, Katie Hall, 

Ann E Hansen, Arthur Edmund Hess, Anne Louise Housholder, Pamela Stuart 

Jones, Kathryn Gallagher Kerisit, Joshua Ryan Leo, Lester Yuqun Leung, Jacqueline 

Marie Magne, Colleen Tamara Millegan, Lena Adnan Omar, Kevin Park, Sarah E 

Sartain, Lindsay Anne Stevens, Russell Presley Swann, Christine Swanson, Vanessa 

Vanderpool, Brett James Welke 

Faculty: Juan Carlos Duchesne, Ben P Sachs 

House staff: Elijah Hamilton Beaty, David Wickliffe Victor III 

Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans—Beta 

Louisiana 

Students: Jacques Francois Ancelet, Richard Louis Arceneaux, Evan Atkinson, 

Elizabeth Ashby Ball, Joseph P Bergeron, Jason Paul Eastlack, Katherine Celeste 

Faust, Scott Michael Francioni, Evan William Gwyn, Bernadette Ann Harris, Seth 

Bartus Hayes, Melissa Leigh Hester, David Christopher Karam, Suzette G Kingston, 

Samineh Madani, Dana Adele Marshall, Ray Cody Mayo III, Russell Ruben Russo, 

Blake Saltaformaggio, Erick Roy Sanchez, Steven A Schneider, Charles Barrett Smith, 

Joshua Allen Wilensky 

Faculty: Neeraj Jain 

House staff: Matthew Carey Foy, William Franklin Sherman 

Louisiana State University School of Medicine at Shreveport—Gamma 

Louisiana 

Students: Rachel Lesniewski Bates, Margaret A Beadle, Jana Alaine Beckett, Matthew 

Joseph Clavenna, Lauren Claire Ditta, Tommy Jeffrey Gould, Sheena Gurwara, 


Lindsey Kobetz Hall, Ann Holland Henderson, Jacob James Jorns, Christopher Cody 

Landry, Blake Joseph LeBlanc, Jaclynn Michelle Lehman, Sara Margarett Mullins, 

Jessica L Patrick, Michael James Reed, Lowery Anne Rogers, Ashley Elizabeth Sittig, 

Alison Denise Smith, Jeffrey Francis Szot, Eric Weissmann 

MARYLAND 

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine—Alpha Maryland 

Students: Michael Alperovich, Michael Franklin Brinkley, Jennifer Kylien Chen, Louis 

Tuong Chinh Dang, Neal Arledge deJong, Jeffrey Peter Fiorenza, Michael David 

George, Phillip John Gray Jr, Rozalina Grubina, Gregory Thomas Havlena, Steven 

Hsu, Jesse Wade Keller, Gargi Divya Khare, Jo Marin Martin, Marisa Eileen Meyer, 

Timothy Michael Niessen, Alison Payne Reid, Daniel Brookner Stein, Sarah Ruth 

Temple, Jana Lynn Vandegrift, Laura DeLong Wood, Ryan Michael Zimmerman 

Alumni: Arthur Louis Burnett, Donna Lynn Magid 

Faculty: Scott Mitchell Wright, Martha Allen Zeiger 

House staff: William Arthur Fischer II, Christopher Simon Hourigan, Jason A 

Williams 

University of Maryland School of Medicine—Beta Maryland 

Students: Amir Ali Abdel-Wahab, Richard Charles Bryson, Ling-Xin Chen, Eva 

Derecskei, Kristina M Frogale, Ida Leah Gitajn, Lindsay Blake Goicochea, Smitha 

Seetharama Gowda, Brian Harkavy, Mira Goldring Herman, Ashley Samantha Huber, 

Cara Beth Kurlander, Sean Michael McAvoy, Horatiu Muresan, Kristin M Powell, 

Janae Preece, Anand Natvarlal Rajpara, Mary Maynadier Rhodes, Zachary Joseph 

Roberts, Michael Joseph Santiago, Michael T Sein, Sarah Elizabeth Sharfstein, Hadas 

Skupsky, Daniel Lewis Suzman, Noam A VanderWalde 

Alumni: Morton Kramer 

Faculty: Richard J Battafarano, Robert Kang Shin 

House staff: Neda Frayha, Joseph Robert Scalea, Eric A Schwartz 

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences F Edward Hébert 

School of Medicine—Gamma Maryland 

Students: Christopher Backus, Brad Ballard, Todd Balog, Charisma C Bautista, 

Scott Eric Bevans, Kimberly Blair Caldwell, Grant K Cochran, Wilfred P De La 

Cruz, Michael Shane Dent, Richard Eide III, Eric S Grenier, Liesl S Grenier, Jeffrey 

Alan Guthrie, Anna Xuzi Hang, Emily Hathaway, Nathanael Edward Hathaway, 

Andrew Peter Hurvitz, Christopher Charles Ledford, Corey Michael Mossop, Kirsten 

Elizabeth Oldach, Travis C Russell, Matthew John Swenson, Bradley Michael Taylor, 

Michael Kenneth Tiger, Edward R Utz, Priscilla Hiu-Chun Wong 

Faculty: Pamela M Williams, Kenneth Scott Yew 

House staff: Jeffrey McClean, Paul D Sargent 

MASSACHUSETTS 

Tufts University School of Medicine—Beta Massachusetts 

Students: Adam Lee Ackerman, Naomi B Anker, Marilyn Barry, Kerry E Biggs, Joseph 

Ewing Bornstein, Audrey Lee Daggan, Danielle K DePeralta, Laura Michelle Doyon, 

Kyle Andrew Drullinger, Adam Todd Griska, Stephanie-Marie Lynn Jones, Daniel G 

Kahn, Alice Leung, Michelle Long, David Alan Lyczkowski, Theodore Eric Macnow, 

Jessica Ann Mitchell, David Grant Munson, Mathew Adam Niemi, Rebecca Anne 

O’Neill, Laurel A Parker, Sameer Puri, Ravin Ratan, Michael Silverman, Kara Michelle 

Smith, Hanni Stoklosa, Brett Alden Sylvia, Katherine Leigh Zaleski 

Boston University School of Medicine—Gamma Masschusetts 

Students: Monica Devi Agarwal, Nora Bassiouni, Rebecca Cydney Batiste, Emily 

Sara Blum, Christina Di Loreto, Nicole Elizabeth Dumas, Marissa Anne Fast, Lauren 

Gehler Fiechtner, Hilary Gallogly, Kelly Elizabeth Guld, Jennifer Hensley, David 

Fessler Hindson, Brandon Michael Jones, Anastasia Lvovna Khoubaeva, Joshua David 

Kuban, Matthew Kun Lee, John Robert Lien, Jessica Anne McHugh, Ami Satish Shah, 

Roberta Ann Spencer, Anna Volerman, Emily Michelle Wise, Chih-Hsiang Barnard 

Yu, Scott David Zimmer 

Alumni: Gail D’Onofrio 

Faculty: Ravin Davidoff 

House staff: Daniel V Arnold, Lauren Marie Nentwich, Scott G Prushik 

University of Massachusetts Medical School—Delta Massachusetts 

Students: Laura Beth Chamberlain, Nicholas Chun, Michael Joseph DeLeo III, 

Darrah Kiersten Doyle, Matthew John Dykhuizen, Robert Walter Eppsteiner, Sheila 

McMurrich Greenlaw, James Michael Lindberg, Helen Rego Moreira, Adrienne 

Rebecca Newburg, Angela Simone Nichols, Elizabeth Winston Patton, Jeffrey Riese, 

Matthew Schreckinger, Alison Stechenberg, Jorge Fernando Tello, Robyn Deborah 

Wing, William Eugene Zawatski 

Alumni: Abigail Adams, Eric Dickson 

Faculty: J Mark Madison, Dominic Nompleggi 

House staff: Bradlee Glenn Drabant, Julie Ann Jaffray, Daniel P Schneider 

MICHIGAN 

University of Michigan Medical School—Alpha Michigan 

Students: Alexandra Ohanian Apkarian, Sanjiv M Baxi, Michael Seth Borofsky, 

Stephen M Broski, Eden Cardozo, Derek Edward Dimcheff, Zarina Dohadwala, 

Gregory Andrew Durm, Laura Anne Gadzala, Austin Matthew Gross, Meredith Jean 

Hall, Lindsay Ann Hampson, Brian Francis Herbst Jr, Alisa Khan, David Christopher 

Lange, Karen Lo Maule, Stephen McHugh, Laurel Elizabeth Mianecki, Ariel 

Ann Palanca, Brita Roy, Daniel Saddawi-Konefka, Terry Shih, Katharine Bourdet 

Simmons, Robert Matthew Smith, Deepak Kudavalli Somashekar, Peter Douglas 

Sottile, Caitlin Stork, Nicole Elizabeth Webb 

Wayne State University School of Medicine—Beta Michigan 

Students: Sayf A Al-katib, Grant J Bailey, Aaron Edward Barry, William McKenna 

Braaksma, Autumn Jade Broady, Britton Joseph Carter, Qing-Min Chen, Johanna 

Rose Coughlin, Stephanie Ann Dean, Robert Neal Falconer, Aaron Andrew Glaeser, 

Nathan Joseph Gonik, Anna M Hehl, Joanna N Hooten, Marian Mohsen Ibrahim, 

Cerine Jeanty, Steven E Kammann, Aaron Min Kang, Mark Kim Kelly, Alla Kwitny, 

Christopher Zi-Soen Lam, Laurel Aerial Leithauser, Victor Suva-Viola Mangona, 

Emily R Mclaren, Patricia May Myers-Gurevitch, Daniel Aaron Osborn, Dominic 

W Pelle, Mihailo Popovic, Meredith Lindsay Price, Ishai Samo Ross, Johanna R 

Scheer, Richard John Schildhouse, Eirwen Murray Scott, Nicole Renee Seleno, Clint 

Douglas Simpson, Adam King Skrzynski, Sakiko Suzuki, Mary Elizabeth Tanski, Senja 

Tomovic, Erica P Vanderkooy, Timothy Owen VanderKooy, Stephen VanHaerents, 

Amber L Warnat, Nathan Thomas Zwagerman 

Michigan State University College of Human Medicine—Gamma Michigan 

Students: Sahil P Attawala, Jamie Lynn Bell, David Edward Hoffelder, Derek Matthew 

Nusbaum, Andrea Jean Marie Olson, Kristin Prentiss Ott, Matthew T Stepanovich, 

Jack Arthur Talsma, Robert Mauro Van Haren, Linnelle A Veldhouse, John Francis 

Wechter, Sarah May Winston 

Alumni: Thomas John Carlson 

Faculty: John Bernard O’Donnell, Kenneth D Rosenman 

House staff: Abhijeet Dhoble, Beatrice G Zepeda 

MINNESOTA 

University of Minnesota Medical School—Twin Cities—Alpha Minnesota 

Students: Philip Vincent Barbosa, Roy Gordon Bryan Jr, Terence Calvin Burns, 

Michelle Delilah Carlson, Katherine Leigh Coffey-Vega, Andrew Thomas Day, 

Renee Marie Donahue, Bryan Mackenzie Donald, Cory Amanda Donovan, Ronda 

Samir Farah, Michael Joseph Felten, Chad Michael Ferguson, Mohammad Abraham 

Kazemizadeh Gol, Andrew James Grossbach, Thomas Martin Hauth, Patrick Kevin 

Horst, Brandon Rupert Johnson, Stacy Briana Krueth, Justin Graham Laube, Michael 

James Lawson, Sarah Anne McAvoy, Mark Andrew McCarthy, Joshua James Mooney, 

David Douglas Nelsen, Amelia Rachel Nelson, Molly Jean Ness, Megan Joy Olejnicak, 

Matthew David Olson, Jonathan Carl Papic, Erin Lee Peterson, Melissa Ann Plog, 

Kristin Maria Pokorney, Theodora Anne Potretzke, Meredith Anne Saylor, Kristi Jo 

Schneider, Sandra JoAnne Schultz 

MISSISSIPPI 

University of Mississippi School of Medicine—Alpha Mississippi 

Students: Stephen Patrick Bergin, Christopher Welch Carr, Cory Blake Carter, Miriam 

Gomez-Sanchez, Bradley Noel Greenhaw, Nicholas Jerome Hendricks, Samantha 

Dawn Morris, Michael Jordan Ray, Robert Andrew Rice, Matthew Allen Sample, 

Gagandeep (Angela) Kaur Sood, Matthew Scott Stevens, Kelly Brian Thompson, 

Newton Brookshire Wiggins, Jeremy Beau Wigginton 

MISSOURI 

Washington University in St Louis School of Medicine —Alpha Missouri 

Students: Shreeram Akilesh, Anthony John Apicelli, Ellen Hunter Bailey, Laurel B 

Barrett, David Micah Brogan, Melani Shaun Cheers, Marios Giannakis, Nadia Vicki 

Giannakopoulos, Scott Evan Hadland, Mohammed Haseebuddin, Rebecca Suzanne 

Hoodecheck, Rachel Huckfeldt, Jessica Lee Maschin, Eric James Monroe, Valliammai 

Muthappan, Amanda Rohn, Tara Marie Scherer, Midori Jane Seppa, Eugenia 

Shekhtman, Daniel Alexander Wattson 

Alumni: John Francis Eisenbeis, Matthew Mutch 

Faculty: Jane Phillips-Conroy, Wayne Makoto Yokoyama 

House staff: Shu-Hong Chang, Spencer J Melby, Gerald Patrick Morris 

Saint Louis University School of Medicine—Beta Missouri 

Students: Scott Allen Andelin, Stephanie Lee Bosslet, Marisa Lora Brant, Devin Taft 

Callister, Andrea Michele Coverstone, Edward David Coverstone, Pawel Tadeusz Dyk, 

Julie S Green, Taylor John Greenwood, Shannon Margaret Higgins, Elizabeth Rose 

Hofbauer, Ryan S Jackson, Joanna Marie Kemp, Luke Thomas Krispinsky, Andrew 

Jacob Lobonc, James B Macdonald, Bradley Alan Reel, Corinne Weimin Tan, Jennifer 

Nicole Tiehen, Elizabeth Trevathan, Campbell Dodd Williams 

University of Missouri—Columbia School of Medicine—Gamma Missouri 

Students: Daniel Isaac Bettis, Jennifer Butler, Evan Ross Cameron, Kevin Edward 

Fisher, Sarah Baxter Fisher, Kevin Gary Frazer, Brian C Fuller, John Michael Harbison, 

Christopher Dennis Jaeger, Thomas McEwan, Ross Bradley Reule, Margaret Louise 

Salisbury, Mary Leah Smith, Adam William Stevens 

Alumni: John Alexander Smith 

Faculty: Kyle C Moylan 



House staff: Marc Estacion Del Rosario, Timothy Paul Mayfield 

University of Missouri—Kansas City School of Medicine—Delta Missouri 

Students: Stephen Lee Edward Bresson, Jennifer Lynn Distasio, Christopher Ryan 

Fitzgerald, Iljana Gaffar, Brandon Gerard Gaynor, Hayley S Graue Hancock, Brian 

Thomas Kelly, Aarika Leslie Menees, Kate Louise Moreng, Melissa Marie Neuwirth, 

Amy Mai Nguyen, Shahab Shaffiey, Lindsey Rapp Smith, Melissa Alexis Thomas, Jill 

Wallace, Mark James Winston 

Alumni: Jonathon M Metzl, Dana Mara Thompson 

Faculty: John Stuart Munro 

House staff: Corey James Auch, Seshu Chepur Rao, Vinay Ashok Shah 

NEBRASKA 

University of Nebraska College of Medicine—Alpha Nebraska 

Students: John Habib Bishay, Erik Bowman, Nicholas C B Branting, Sarah 

Dance, Brett Duncan, Andrew Joseph Ferdinand, Andrew Gard, Daniel Matthew 

Hershberger, Rachel Renae Johnson, Nathan Robert Krug, Matthew Jay Kruse, Lauren 

Ann Kyle, Joseph Margheim, Jessica R Moran-Hansen, Michael O’Hara, Sara Reppert, 

Justin Michael Risma, Malachia Trout, Boyd Ramsey Viers, Timothy Earl Yates 

Alumni: Harris A Frankel 

Faculty: Teresa G Berg, Donald A Leopold 

House staff: Matias Bruzoni, Ryan Sewell 

Creighton University School of Medicine—Beta Nebraska 

Students: Joseph Vincent Blas, Phuc (Phillip) Dang, Anna Engeln, Alex Garton, 

Carolyn Marie Green, Gabriel Harris, David Edward Hartigan, Shane Jared Havens, 

Fridolin Joseph Hoesly, Keith C Hood, Anna Marie Johnson, Brian Andrew Knipe, 

Eric Stephen Marty, Thomas John McCarthy, Sean Michael O’Neill, Hannah Clare 

Otepka-Pitt, Katherine Lynn Sramek, Christopher Taggert Veal, Brian Wheeler, 

Brittany Willer, Theodore Francis Wissink 

Alumni: Elizabeth A Blair 

Faculty: Againdra Kumar Bewtra, Lee E Morrow 

House staff: Chia-Li Lai, Eric Drue Peters, Ruby Satpathy 

NEVADA 

University of Nevada School of Medicine—Alpha Nevada 

Students: Joseph Victor Brown, Kevin M Gamett, Cheryl Janene Gustafson, Suresh 

Raman, Kerri Leigh Robbins, John Kelly Sutherland, Kamin Beth VanGuilder, Eryn M 

Xavier, Mara Lynn Zulauf 

Faculty: Ole J Thienhaus 

NEW HAMPSHIRE 

Dartmouth Medical School—Alpha New Hampshire 

Students: Mark H Baskin, Peter Burrage, Kara Yi-hsin Detwiller, Daniel Kaser, 

Benjamin Northrup, Andrea Russo, Jennifer Carr Talmadge 

NEW JERSEY 

University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson 

Medical School—Alpha New Jersey 

Students: Nicole Theresa Bavuso, Adam Ross Befeler, Joanna Kathleen Bradley, 

Thomas Mazur Coyne, James Francis Crismale, Sarah Julia Driscoll, Jordana Elaine 

Ellway, Daniel William Flis, Tara Faye Golisch, Brian Gaston Howard, Sunil S Jani, 

Kimberly Kilfoyle, Dana Reed Kindermann, Tara Lee Lautenslager, Calvin K Lew, 

Jennifer Marie Martini, Elana Eva Monchar, Daniel Andrew Nelson, Katherine Lee 

Osusky, Lauren Pallone, Emily Lizabeth Porch, Peter Gabriel Pryzbylkowski, Abhay 

A Singh, Amish Tilara, Julia R Tokarski, Tatyana Travkina, Michael Mark Vosbikian, 

Jonathan Phil Yun 

Faculty: David Allen August, John D Baxter 

House staff: Snehal Rudresh Bhatt, Hady Antoine Ghanem, John C Peng 

UMDNJ—New Jersey Medical School—Beta New Jersey 

Students: Mina Abdelshahed, Daniel Amoruso, Nisha Bavalia, Michael Bercik, 

Joseph Brown, Reid Collins, Jessica Cortazzo, Marisa Anne Earley, Yvonne Farnacio, 

Kimberly Gardner, Aanand Geria, Dina M Gordon, Abigail Elizabeth Huang, Thomas 

Kole, Christine F Lauro, Allison Baker Lawyer, Ernest Lee, Marcos Manuel Martinez, 

Jesse Ng, Gopal Atmaram Patel, Carly Elizabeth Podnos, Alexander Sailon, Kimmerle 

Sellen, Simant Shah, Geethan Sivananthan, Jay Turner, Sung Yi 

Alumni: Philip J Cohen 

Faculty: Brajesh K Lal 

House staff: Francis John Caputo 

NEW MEXICO 

University of New Mexico School of Medicine—Alpha New Mexico 

Students: Amy Marie Babb, Joe Blunt Baker, Kathryn Elise Coan, Katie Nicole 

Finnerty, Kara Gwin, Laura Anne Heise, Brittany Howard, Craig R Lehrman, Marc 

Mabray, Almea M Matanock, David Meredith, Amy Rebecca Nixon, Sarah Oman, 

Lauren Kathryn Rasmussen, Michael Roehlk, Justin Taylor, Dylan J Watson 

Faculty: Sanjeev Arora, David Paul Sklar 

House staff: Houman M Fekrazad, Thomas Bennett Russell, Naveed Usman Saqib 

NEW YORK 

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons—Alpha New York 

Students: Catherine Marie Albright, Rakee Mishra Bowker, Katherine Lecker Carson, 

Michael Jason Cutalo, Koushik Kumar Das, Gillian Ruth Diercks, Jacob Appel Doll, 

Barry Michael Fine, Sarah Elizabeth Goglin, Jordan Vernon Jacobs, Kristine You-Shu 

Kay, Kristen Knoll, Amy McCormick Lunding, Marc William Manseau, Cameron 

Marshall, Maxwell Bartos Merkow, Charles Bazemore Mikell, Matthew Cole Oliff, 

Olufoladare Gabriel Olorunsola, Charles Resor, Meghan E Sise, David Tsay, Jason 

Phillip Van Batavia, Lauren Taggart Wasson, Janette Zuk 

Weill Cornell Medical College—Beta New York 

Students: Ashkan Michael Abbey, Rebecca Carlin, Ryan Patrick Cauley, Heather 

Elizabeth Gotha, Daniel M Halperin, Benjamin Jay Herbstman, Crystal Hung, Ian 

Darin Huntington, Kristen Kyongae Lee, Eugene Licht, Scott R Montgomery, Thomas 

Ryan Neely, David Pisapia, Benjamin Fox Ricciardi, Jennifer L Swails, Ryan K Wong 

State University of New York, Upstate Medical University, College of 

Medicine—Gamma New York 

Students: Daniel Michael Arsenault, Kathleen Anne Carroll, Chad Cornish, Michael 

Edward Coyle, Matthew J Daily, Ryan Matthew Dunst, John Patrick Fischer, George 

Ghobrial, Robert T Van Gorder, Christine Marie Granato, Sarah Louise Mather 

Greenberg, Valerie Christine Greene, Robert Kallinicos, Rebecca Sue Lawrence, 

Lindsay McGann, Robin Marie Nagowski, Erin A Nozetz, Jack P Palmer III, Andrew 

Marcus Quinn, Patrick Michael Reagan, Kimberly Robeson, Joseph Anthony 

Sciarrino, Laura Elizabeth Scordino, Amanda Beth Sosulski, Leo Joseph Urbinelli, 

Mark B Van Deusen, Jessica R Weiss 

Alumni: Thomas Amedeo Bersani, Craig J Byrum 

Faculty: John Wilson Epling, Jack Ming Hsu 

House staff: Joel Evan Portnoy 

New York University School of Medicine—Delta New York 

Students: Nicholas Dodge Altman, Rupali Surendra Avasare, Jillian Leigh Borman, 

Steve Evan Braunstein, Allison Sophie Chatalbash, Anna Lopatin Dickerman, Baruch 

S Fertel, Eleza Tema Golden, Andrew Michael Goldsweig, Natalya Sarah Hasan, 

Colleen Stephanie Lynch, Alexis Paula Melnick, Carrie L Morgenstein, Shweta R 

Motiwala, Jonathan Haim Oren, John S Quick, Francisco Ramirez-Valle, Briana 

Marie Riemer, Andrew Erwin Schober, Carolyn Dacey Seib, Frank Scott Siringo, 

Alexandar Spektor, Vanessa Lee Starr, Jacqueline Blair Stone, Jordan Louis Swartz, 

Eve Auchincloss Wadsworth, Martin Jacob Wolff 

Alumni: Arthur S Agatston 

Faculty: Lewis Robert Goldfrank 

University at Buffalo, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, State 

University of New York—Epsilon New York 

Students: Surbhi Bansal, Colleen Elizabeth Bell, Erin Elizabeth Conway, Jennifer Gall, 

Swathi Gopalakrishnan, Colin Moy Haines, Danielle E Harmon, Michael Alexander 

Huba, Betty Joy Huo, Christine Kassis, Arielle Kurzweil, Terrence Patrick Lester, 

Milana Mor, Niv Mor, Jonah Harshad Patel, Jennifer Lynn Pugh, Jason Michael Rotoli, 

Christian Spano, Omar Tanweer, Kathleen Louise Wania, Alexander Evan Weber, 

Marc Adam Weiskopf, Jan Rang Wong, Amy Lynn Zielinski 

University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry—Zeta New York 

Students: Zarina S, Ali , Zachary Borus, Elizabeth Wilson Crafts, Charles Nicholas 

Eisenhauer, Stephen Graham George, Kimberly Lai, Lisa Renee Lincoln, Rene Pierre 

Myers, Brock B O’Neil, Jennifer Riehl, Solomon Slomovic Shaftel, Andrew James 

Tompkins, Alexis Abbott Weymann, David DeVilbiss Wilson, Jonathan Rodger Wood 

Alumni: Elias T Zambidis 

Faculty: Jonathan W Mink 

House staff: Jonathan Andrew Marcus, Melissa Kay Samuelsson 


Medicine—Eta New York 

Students: Meira Abramowitz, Lauren Elizabeth Adams, Michael G Allison, Katherine 

L Auringer, Yuri Babayev, Joseph Emanuel Canterino, Stefanie Crystal Cardamone, 

Todd Jared Carpenter, John K Cho, James Choi, Neil Clarence Christopher, Rebecca 

Citrin, Matthew Edward Doscher, Lori J Ellis, Jennifer Goldman, Courtney Christina 

Hanson, Ilana Harwayne-Gidansky, Michael Adam Heisler, Daniel M Horn, Jeremy 

Horn, Nuri Jacoby, Alix F Leader-Cramer, Siyang Leng, Dmitry Levin, Caitlin Jane 

McGinty, Mamta Arvind Mehta, Sarah Luisa Melendez, Brienne Miner, Maria B 

Schiavone, Bridget Anne Tracy, Elena Beth Weinreb, James Martin Willis, William 

Win, Wayne Yan 

Alumni: Steven W Piecuch, Richard Sadovsky 

Faculty: Michael Howard Augenbraun, Judith H LaRosa 

House staff: Heba Abdulla, Koray Erol Arica, Tajinderpal Saraon 

Albany Medical College—Theta New York 

Students: Christopher David Brook, Jamie Lauren Busch, Timothy James Caramore, 

Nicole Michelle Ceradini, Lori Ann DeFreest, Michael Anthony DiMaio, Pouyan 

Famini, Rachna M Goel, Lauren Elizabeth Hansen, Nadia Haqqie, Elizabeth Walker 

Hubbard, Peter Alexander Leahey, Mary BreAnn Mackenzie, Cherie Paquette, 


Melissa Lobel Rose, William Matthew Sayde, Ronak Kiran Talati, Andrea Spaulding 

Teague, Jennifer Leigh Termeer, Claire Dava Wolinsky, Mariko Ruth Yasuda 

Faculty: Hashim M Hesham, Mark Donald White 

House staff: Fassil Brian Mesfin 

New York Medical College—Iota New York 

Students: Shanshan Bao, Joseph Basile, Nina Prakash Bondade, Matthew Brown, 

Stephanie Pepper Carreiro, Allyson Chesebro, Jeffrey FB Chick, Allison Rachel 

Cohen, Ashley C Crimmins, Samantha Maria Dias, Andrew Erwteman, Angela 

Fusaro, Jamison Green, Madelaine Haddican, Jessica Hu, Nicole Leone, Carrie Luu, 

Jennifer McOsker, Neil Parikh, Julia Park, James Douglas Quint, Farid Razavi, Erica 

Romblom, Rena Shah, Timothy Robert Singewald, Salitha Sunderrajan, Tushar 

Natvarlal Suthar, Christopher Ryan Trebino, Adele Tse, Andrew Rudolph Tsen, 

Jordan Field Wicker 

Alumni: James Eric Udelson 

Faculty: Gladys Maria Ayala, Mark Charles Rabiner 

Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University—Kappa New York 

Students: Karen Amy Chernoff, Michelle Sarah Cohen, Elana Ida Den, Elizabeth S 

DeWitt, Terri Febbraro, Tova C Fischer, Rebecca Parver Gamss, Jessica Garrison, 

Alexis Cara Gimovsky, Jamie Steven Hirsch, Mariko Koya, Mya Esther Levy, 

Bat-Sheva Maslow, Benjamin Jacobs May, Craig Andrew Mayr, Vikram Anand 

Padmanabhan, Lisa Balzano Puglisi, Elgida Radoncipi, Casey Seideman, Collette 

N Spalding, Jennifer Anne Sparr, Robert M Starke, Martina Taylor, Stephen James 

Torres, Sarah E Turbett, Selin Tuysuzoglu, Frank M Volpicelli, Lisa Christine 

Winterroth, Lisa Caren Zuckerwise 

Faculty: David J Prezant 

Mount Sinai School of Medicine of New York University—Lambda New York 

Students: Noura Serene Abul-Husn, Jeffrey Mark Baumgardner, Michelle Wilson 

Bell, Tiffany Erin Chao, Alexandra S Charen, Benjamin Goldsmith, Anna Iasmine 

Kirkorian, Aaron Michael Laine, Brian Philip Lehpamer, Nirnimesh Chandra Pandey, 

Mihir Suryakant Parikh, Mariecel Christina Pilapil, Harry Michael Salinas, Joshua 

Schulman-Marcus, Andrew Damien Schweitzer, Jeffrey Daniel Sharon, Amy Lauren 

Turitz, Ryan Colin Ungaro, Avner Yemin, Jessica Zeidman 

Alumni: Daniel Perl, Richard Hersh Stern 

Faculty: Gustavo Del Toro, Joseph R Masci 

House staff: Jason Saleh, Joseph Truglio, Julia Wisniewski 

Stony Brook University Medical Center School of Medicine—Mu New York 

Students: Lindsey Caldwell, Jeffrey Cangelosi, Paul Chen Jr, Daniel Cormican, Dennis 

Abraham Daniel, Noah Israel Goldfarb, Alan Goldstein, Farshid Hajimirzaee, Adi 

Hirshberg, Karen M Jablonski, Amanika Kumar, Roy Lirov, Gele Brown Moloney, 

Prathima Nandivada, Vincent J Santo III, Jing Wang, Kristen M Williams, Andrew 

Gordon Winer, Xiaoti Xu 

Faculty: David Bryant Cohen, Richard Joseph Scriven 

House staff: Jason Michael Kim 


Duke University School of Medicine—Alpha North Carolina 

Students: Johanna Elisabeth Bischof, Adam Michael Caputo, Bryan Daehahn Choi, 

Mackenzie Rainier Cook, Rachel Gottron Greenberg, Rohit Gupta, Carolyn Pickeral 

Horney, Jason Marcus Langheier, John Strudwick Lewis Jr, Krish Patel, Priyesh Ashok 

Patel, Michael Charles Raisch, Tracy Lynn Rose, Matthew Swisher, Anna Elise Teeter, 

Walter Richard Whitworth 

Alumni: Ullin Whitney Leavell Jr, Robert M Rosemond 

Faculty: Rodger Alan Liddle, Kenneth Ward Lyles 

House staff: Christoph Paul Hornik, Leal Kang Hsiao, Robert L Lobato 

Wake Forest University Health Sciences (School of Medicine)—Beta North 

Carolina 

Students: Aaron Heinrich Baer, Andrew Corcoran, Malachi Wade Courtney, James 

Zachary Forsey, Christopher Charles French, Gavin Blair Gore, Elizabeth Heritage, 

Mikhail C S S Higgins, Stephen Cameron Kearns, Emily Katherine Knipper, Weston 

Wyatt Saunders, Elizabeth Winans Tucker, Ryan Vasan, Feifei Zhao 

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine—Gamma 

North Carolina 

Students: Michael John Allingham, Aleksandra Sasha Avery, Michael James Belsante, 

Margaret Anne Bevilacqua, Elizabeth Kathleen Wilson Borders, Anna Ruth Burkhead, 

Souvik Chatterjee, Kathryn Anne Cziraky, Paul Brent Ferrell Jr, Daniel L Fox, Lauren 

Paige Holloway, Nicholas Paul Iannuzzi, Garjae Dayan Lavien, Quinn Kerr Lippmann, 

Meredith Elliott Miller, Mattie Wray Nicholas, Kristoff Anderson Olson, Suha Janine 

Patel, Lily Kathryn Pemberton, Jeanne Louise Rittschof, Teresa Danielle Samulski, 

Kelly Marie Smith, Trista Day Snyder, Jennifer Orr Vincent, Jessica Susan Watson 

Faculty: Alice Chuang 

House staff: Megan Ann Clinton, Gavin Jeffrey Henderson, John J Meier IV 

The Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University—Delta North 

Carolina 

Students: Mary Jane Barchman, Megan Rebecca Barrett, Crysten Marie Brinkley, 

Christopher Todd Bullers, Kristen Brooke Merritt Chalk, Bryan Keith Dunn, Bari 

Marissa Eberhardt, Andrea Renee Gregory, Ryan Thomas Holland, Sued Adnan 

Mustafa, Alicia Marie Myers, Joshua Graham Porter, Lindsay Rebekah Roofe 

NORTH DAKOTA 

University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences—Alpha 

North Dakota 

Students: Miran J Blanchard, Dane Breker, Janalee Kae Holmes, Ian Joseph Lalich, 

Ashley Pauline Marek, Sara Lynn Mees, Benjamin H Sickler, Matthew Richard Soule, 

Brandon Curtis Speidel, Shannon Cleta Steppler 

Alumni: Jerry Michael Obritsch 

Faculty: Robert Gregory Oatfield 

House staff: Suima Aryal, Sri Vardhan Reddy Kooturu 

OHIO 

Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine—Alpha Ohio 

Students: Bishr Aldabagh, Jonathan Edwards Belding, Lacey Benson, Candice Anne 

Bookwalter, Adriane Michelle Boyle, Joone Ha James Choi, Shilpa Desai, Teresa 

Michelle Edwards, Chad Michael Fortun, Karen Jayne Gibbins, Sogol Javaheri, John N 

Mafi, Ovidiu Marina, Brandon C Maughan, Julie Lynne McClave, Jamin Christopher 

Morrison, Jane Hee Park, Catherine Rottkamp, Ashraf A Sabe, Mark Jason Sando, 

Teresa Shyr, David Michael Svec, Jodi Michelle Thomson, Paul A Toogood 

Faculty: Charles Kent Smith 

University of Cincinnati College of Medicine—Beta Ohio 

Students: Leah Bauer, Kara M Brinker, Hillary Ann Dunlevy, Matthew Robert Fulton, 

Patrick Elliott Harvey, Patrick Jones, Jennifer Caitlin Kelley, Jordan Raed Kharofa, 

Justin Lee Klanke, Megan Elizabeth Lea, Ryan B Maher, Erin Elizabeth Medlin, Katie 

Meier, Hillary Mount, Mark Robert Onady II, Amy Jo Petitt, Sarah Rachel Pickle, 

Natalie Jane Pilgrim, Ralph Cutler Quillin III, Christopher Michael Runyan, Haiyang 

Tao, Adam Alexander Vukovic, Jennifer Mary Walker, Denise Michelle White, Jessica 

Lee Yarber 

Alumni: William Barrett 

Faculty: Michael Floren Reed, Michael Floren Reed, Kenneth Sherman 

House staff: Mubeen Akhtar Jafri, Emily Louise Leasure, Rita Schmid 

Ohio State University College of Medicine—Gamma Ohio 

Students: Matthew Thomas Allemang, Kiran T Bidari, Zachary Bryan, Kristen Arling 

Burwick, Jaquelyn Coloe, Robert Michael Cronin, Scott Cronin, Casey D Curtis, 

Katherine Fening, Mary Helen Fleming, Alissa Michelle Gilbert, Kristen Ashley 

Grubb, Daniel Hammer, Katya Lea Harfmann, Lauren Beth Haveman, Jessica Holder, 

Phillip Horne, Benjamin Harris Kaffenberger, Michael Joseph Lang, Jonathan A Lipps, 

Erin Elizabeth Longbrake, Scott Michael McClintic, Peter Michael Meis, Christopher 

Philip Ouellette, Anay Rajendra Patel, Jared David Peterson, Anthony Petruso, 

Trenton D Rink, David Michael Rowley, Rachel Addison Schleichert, David A Shiple, 

Catherine Coates Sinclair, Shawn Michael Stevens, James Wisler, Anna Elizabeth 

Ziegler 

Alumni: Michael Donald Maves, John Niederhuber 

Faculty: Kevin Victor Hackshaw, Rebecca Ruth Hampton 

House staff: Andrew Owen Crockett, Georgann Anetakis Poulos 

The University of Toledo, College of Medicine—Delta Ohio 

Students: Kristin Elizabeth Abbott, Joshua Ryan Beck, Jason Michael Buehler, James 

Veto Cireddu, Alexander Akram Farag, Tiffany M Frazee, Steven Sungmin Hong, 

Marshall Preston Hyden II, Kristen Marie Kunklier, Romie Nelson Mundy II, Joshua 

Matthew Philbrick, Asher Ian Shafton, Asmaneh Soufi Siavosh, Brittany Meg Tesner, 

Mark Timothy Tierney, Dustin Rideout Watson, Kelvin Shih Chun Wong, Jason 

Mingji Wu 

Wright State University Boonschoft School of Medicine—Epsilon Ohio 

Students: Matthew Aaron Armstrong, Nicole Marie Carignan, Elizabeth Jane Davis, 

Brandi R Hartley, Matthew Scott Hensler, Brian Foley Imbrogno, Benjamin Michael 

Mack, Justin A Mandell, Brian Michael Pennington, Christopher N Redman, Jeremy 

Nathan Reese, John L Roebel, Maria Elena Shaker, Courtney Marie Stroble, Gregory 

Michael Thompson, Michelle Elizabeth Treasure, Kirk E Whetstone 

Faculty: Thomas Edward Herchline 

House staff: Shabana Jaynul Dewani, David Andrew Hart, Ross A Schumer 

Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine—Zeta Ohio 

Students: William Brian Beam, Holly R Dyer, Kevin Frey, Mikhenan Horvath, Gene 

Omar Huang, Marcos Antonio Izquierdo, Erin Marie Jackson, Andrew Michael King, 

Jamie Anne Kistler, Colleen Kovach, Neha Kumar, Sarah Metzger, Bradley Allen 

Moore, Akil P Patel, Ashlee Nicole Russo, Elim Shih, Amber Margaret Somerville, 

Matthew Gregory Warndorf, Homer O Wiland 

Alumni: Robert Paul Brophy 

Faculty: Matthew Lawrence Krauza 

House staff: Mark Pozsgay, William Schnettler 



OKLAHOMA 

University of Oklahoma College of Medicine—Alpha Oklahoma 

Students: Janeen Lynnae Arbuckle, Matthew Paul Perron Bauer, Amanda Lynn Brown, 

Kristopher Donald Collins, Sunita Chahar Crittenden, Steven David Cromwell, Mark 

Crouch, Logan Simon D’Souza, Jason Paul Doye, Alison Ann Galatian, Christopher 

John Goff, Kathryn Colvert Griffin, Daniel Martin Harwell, Julie Heather Hausmann, 

Chase Dean Hendrickson, Blake Alan Isernhagen, Nolan James Jaeger, Mark Byron 

Jennings, Michael Edward Johnson, Kristopher T Kimmell, Foster Donald Lasley, 

James Clifford Layton, Jacqueline Theodora Lee, Samantha Lynne Mallory, Jonathan 

Paul Mannas, Kerri D May, Aelayna Nicole Meyer, Carly Marie Miller, Todd 

Wayne Mollet, Aaron Morgan, Newton B Neidert, Andra Dale Nuzum-Keim, Pal 

Singh Randhawa, Amy Lynn-Jacobson Schimke, Lauren Heather Schwartz, Mark 

Christopher Shreve, Michael Slade Stratton, Bradley Allen Wilson 

OREGON 

Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine—Alpha 

Students: Samuel Fritz Bremmer, Serena Hsi-Ju Chan, Catherine Marie Dondlinger, 

Ambar Faridi, Evelyn Rebecca Ford, Mark Quincy Goodman, Angela Noel Hiatt, 

Kevin Jones, Joshua Kornegay, Andrew Dean Kroeker, Derek James Leinenbach, 

Vincent Ken Lew, Jenny Lara Semadeni Malcom, Steven Elias Mansoor, Colin David 

McKnight, Kristen M O’Donnell, Andrew Bailey Ross, Jennifer Ross, Renee K 

Rutledge, Jonathan Douglas Wildi 

Faculty: Patricia Denise Hurn, O John Ma 

House staff: Amy L Marr 

PENNSYLVANIA 

Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University—Alpha 

Pennsylvania 

Students: Valentin Antoci Jr, Julianne Biroschak, Katharine Carroll Button, Beth 

Ann Careyva, Thenappan Chandrasekar, John Patrick Dahl, Paul J Das, Brent Robert 

DeGeorge Jr, Joseph Daniel DePietro, Kristin Doyle, Anthony Waguih Farah, Joanna 

Fertala, Dave Hall, Laura J Heinmiller, Heidi M Hermes, Karla Ashley Hirshorn, 

Robin Virginia Horak, Andrea Hunt, Adam E Hyatt, Amelia Marie Jernigan, Trisha 

Juliano, Benjamin F Katz, Nikhil A Kumta, Shanu Kohli Kurd, David Ryan Lally, 

Adam Douglas Lindsay, Arayel Osborne, Neal Palejwala, William John Parkes, Ravi 

Patel, Joseph Laurence Petfield, Steven Matthew Presciutti, Brian Paul Riff, Abhik 

Roy, Mark Alan Seeley, Cristina Stingo, Christopher C Stryker, Edward Robert 

Villella, Kateki Vinod, Alison Lynne Walsh, Krystle Wang, Alison Shelley Witkin, 

Kathleen Briana Zendell 

Faculty: Naisohn Arfai 

House staff: Constance Gasda Andrejko 

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine—Beta Pennsylvania 

Students: Rebecca Sara Adler, Omowunmi Aibana, Lisa Michelle Arkin, Abigail 

Tripp Berman, Inbal Braunstein, Jaehyun Byun, Dave Ashok Chokshi, Keira Alexis 

Cohen, Jessica Lynn Ebberson, Catharine Clare Eleey, John Gordan, Andrew Michael 

Intlekofer, Luke Steven Janik, Rebecca Jennings, Robert Caleb Kovell, Yuo-Chen Kuo, 

Caitlin Loomis, Marlise Rachael Luskin, Hilary Della Marston, Lena Molly Mathews, 

Jason Christopher Ojeda, Adam David Robertson Rowh, Sara Sahar Samimi, Read 

Langlois Siry, Jeffrey Robert Swanson, Anthony John Taglienti, Sasha Waring, Mina 

Yassaee 

Faculty: Wallace T Miller Jr 

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine—Gamma Pennsylvania 

Students: Sapan N Ambani, Jared Michael Bieniek, Megan Bradley, Timothy Wallace 

Caprio, Stephanie Downs-Canner, Michael Howell, Chetan Shawn Irwin, Kathleen E 

Kearney, Yvonne Y Lai, Lung-Yi (Felix) Lee, Charles Madeira, Philip Kraus McClure, 

Brett Foster Michelotti, Vinod Narla, Nikhil Oak, Praneil Patel, Matthew David 

Pavlick, Jennifer A Salati, Mara Elizabeth Semel, Jonathan David Small, Lauren Kay 

Toney, Kirk Michael Volker, Bryan Kevin Ward, Daniel Richard Welchons, Anna 

Christine Zemke 

Faculty: Neil Alexander Christie 

House staff: John Lawrence Falcone, Patricio Marcelo Polanco 

Drexel University College of Medicine—Delta-Zeta 

Students: Marjorie Ellen Affel, Scott Allen, Halima Amjad, Larissa Applegate, Danielle 

Beth Barrocas, Michael Abel Chang, Shin-Bey Chang, Elizabeth Clabby, Jeremy 

Cameron Davis, Kim Richards Driftmier, Timothy Ewald, Eric Solomon Ginsberg, 

James A Heilman, Ingrid Zahra Hyder, Adam Franklin Jester, Brett Jewett, Kathryn 

Luree Jones, Paulomi Kadakia, Anthony F Miller, Vanessa Rose Papalazaros, Heather 

Anne Parsons, Lindsay Ann Pharmer, Daniel Robert Pinney, Taylor Robinson Pollei, 

Meena S Ramchandani, Veronica Araujo Ramirez, Madhury Ray, Joshua Roehrich, 

Michael Sasso, Kathleen Schenker, Sveta Shah, Justin Alan Singer, Hilary Smolen, 

Ashlee Lynn Snyder, Michael Tatusov, Lauren Kimberly Tormey, Andrew R Torre- 

Healy, Natasa C Townsend, Jeffrey M Tuman, Andrew C Waligora IV, Eun-mi Yu 

Alumni: Dorothy Isabella Bulas, Karen Roos 

Faculty: Itzhak Fischer, Robert Shayne McGregor 

House staff: Dong Heun Lee, Lina Mackelaite, Raj Prakash Munshi 

Temple University School of Medicine—Epsilon Pennsylvania 

Students: Sarah Susan Asch, Margaret Brannigan, Justin Todd Buchanan, Megan 

Cathleen Cahill, Micah Cohen, Eugene Joseph Garvin, Paul Gera, Christopher M 

Granville, Jason Alan Grieshober, Sara Jeevanjee, Robert M Kurtz, Ann Marie Lam, 

Nancy Lee, Katherine Mayer, Michael Lancaster O’Neill, Amy Ost, Chirdeep K 

Patel, Jessica Erin Scholl, Kimberly Smith, Daniel William Upton, Vanessa Vaz, John 

Alexander Viehman, Andrew Patrick Walker, Stephen Gerard Walsh, Susan Wang, 

Brandon Wiley, Jessica Lynn Wobb 

Alumni: Steven R. Houser, Eileen M Moynihan 

Faculty: David J Karras, Kathleen A Reeves 

Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine—Eta Pennsylvania 

Students: Alysa Amber Brown, Alexis J DiSilvestro, Clinton Joseph Duncan, Jonathan 

Robert Enterline, Melissa Kate Goldstein, Madeline Dillon Gregorits, Brian Douglas 

Handly, Carrie Alane Hossler, John Joseph Knoedler, Jedediah I McClintic, Lindsey 

A McCormick, Gavin Amery McKenzie, Charles William O’Connell, Marlana M 

Orloff, Scott Maurice Paviol, Christie G Regula, Jason M Schauer, Natalie Ruth 

Schwartzentruber, Daniel Charles Shepherd, Angela Marie Sprigle, Khin Nyeinchan 

Win, Erica L Zerfoss 

Faculty: David Goldenberg, Maryellen Gusic 

House staff: David W Dougherty, Nicole A Swallow, William Upton Todd 

PUERTO RICO 

University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine—Alpha Puerto Rico 

Students: Betsy Gisselle Colon-Acevedo, Jairo D Colon-Agront, Isaura Diaz Torres, 

Samuel Estronza-Ojeda, Yara Zoe Feliciano-Rivera, Mervin Figueroa-Pinto, Juan 

A Flores-Gonzalez, Michael Gonzalez-Ramos, Yania Marina Lopez-Alvarez, Karla 

Nicole Nieves-Borrero, Angel G Pagan-Torres, Pedro J Rios-Morales, Ismael 

Rodriguez-Vazquez, Luis A Santiago-Caban, Neda I Sedora-Roman, Chris I Wong- 

Quiles 

Alumni: Reynold Lopez-Enriquez, Edith Adaljisa Perez 

Faculty: Antonio Ignacio Del Valle, Enrique O Ortiz-Kidd 

House staff: Eduardo J Labat, Adisbeth Morales-Burgos 

Ponce School of Medicine—Beta Puerto Rico 

Students: Paola Teresa Chamorro, Sol T De Jesus, Carino Patricia Fernandez-Golarz, 

Melissa Marie Guanche, Marisara Dieppa Lopez de Victoria, Jason Douglas McCrillis, 

Adrianna Mickelson, Sarah Narotzky, Daniel Rivera-Buscaglia, Jorge Gustavo 

Rodriguez-Figueroa, Richard Sola Jr, Leonardo Ivan Valentin Perez Jr 

Faculty: Elizabeth A Barranco, Willie Vazquez 

Universidad Central del Caribe School of Medicine—Gamma Puerto Rico 

Students: Damaris Acosta-Miranda, Manuel A Corripio, Victor R Ortiz Declet, 

Rebecca J Garcia-Sosa, Sebastian Rodrigo Gatica, Juan Manuel Guzman, Karen 

M Rosado, Jose Guillermo Torres-Acevedo, Daynet Vega, Victor Antonio Velez 

Aldahondo 

Alumni: Marcos A Parrilla Rios 

Faculty: Jose Luis Oliver 

RHODE ISLAND 

The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University—Alpha Rhode 

Island 

Students: Jeremy Simpson Boyd, Jessica Loretta Chan, Sarah Ann Farley, Sonia Garg, 

Anna B Halpern, Curtis Mitchell Henn, Elizabeth Clelland Hutton, Joshua Robert 

Lakin, Amy Kristen McIntyre, Richard John Myers, Alissa Ashley Thomas, Beth 

Marion Toste, James Andrew Town, Sarah Elizabeth Wakeman, Leslie Ann Wei 

Faculty: Amos Charles, Thomas F Tracy 

House staff: Nicole Everline Alexander, Edmund Hamilton Sears Jr, Rajan Krishnakant 

Thakkar 


Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine—Alpha South 

Carolina 

Students: Michael Arthur Babcock, Eric L Bonno, Margaret Hannah Bosdell, Virginia 

Lee Clyburn, Gavin Wade Davis, Mark Andrew Hallman, Ashley Procopio-Allen 

Helgeson, Abbie Lee Husman, Richard Andrew Jamison, Matthew Robert Kappus, 

John Bennet Ball Korman, Ann Mari Leylek, Kathryn Willoughby McCutchen, 

Courtney Lee McFaddin, Kristina Ann Mrowca, Brendan Powers O’Connell, 

Katherine Williams Powell, Julie Camille Robinson, Bree Nicole Ruppert, Amanda 

Renee Ryan, Martin Allen Smith, Robert Taylor, Andre Becker Uflacker 

Faculty: Julio A Chalela, Jeffrey Scott Cluver 

House staff: Jason Andrew Goebel, Marie O Ventre 

University of South Carolina School of Medicine—Beta South Carolina 

Students: Amin Aghaebrahim, Edward Lee Barnes, Holly Hollingsworth Bowdre, 

William Edwards Bynum IV, Katherine Elizabeth Campbell, Krista J Davenport, 

Malcolm Daniel Eggart, Leslie Gilbert, Christina Crabbe Kennelly, Erin Burfield 

Marcotsis, Olga Raetskaya-Solntseva, Robert Patrick Richter, Brent Jerome Wilkerson 

Alumni: Katherine Anne Close 


Faculty: John Valentine Dacus, Carol Lynn McMahon 

House staff: Janie Catherine Bruce, Ginny Lee Gottschalk, Mark Allen Jones 

SOUTH DAKOTA 

Sanford School of Medicine of the University of South Dakota—Alpha South 

Dakota 

Students: Jay Julius Bauder, Jared William Daniel, Justin Jeffrey Elhoff, Aaron Kyle 

Graumann, James Arthur Kuzman, Douglas William Lynch, Robert Austin Miller, 

Sarah Beth Wierda 

Alumni: Joel A Ziebarth 

Faculty: Susan M Anderson 

House staff: Darshana Yogendra Patel 

TENNESSEE 

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine—Alpha Tennessee 

None reported 

University of Tennessee Health Science Center, College of Medicine—Beta 

Tennessee 

Students: Morgan Dean Anderson, Harry Michael Baddour Jr, Michael Jason Beebe, 

Corey Scofield Bolac, Amber Jo Evans, Anne Elizabeth Gill, Dale Eugene Hansen III, 

Harry Robert Hixson Jr, Carrie Baker Holloway, David Crawford Holt III, Georgia 

Lee Ketchum, Ashley Elizabeth Laing, Kevin Wade Luttrell, Monica Park Lynch, Ellen 

McCarley O’Shea, Minesh Suresh Patel, Anju Lata Singhal, Lesley Littrell Starnes, 

Justin Wayne Walker, Allyson Brooke Warren, Katherine Alice Wells, Emily Tipton 

Wolfe 

Faculty: John P DeVincenzo, Solomon Sidney Solomon 

House staff: Ebenezer A Nyenwe, Blazej Zbytek 

Meharry Medical College School of Medicine—Gamma Tennessee 

Students: Dominique Yvonne Arce, Lashea Davis, Sumayah Hargette, Mark G Heidel, 

Jonathan Ben Laymance, Freya Elena Marshall, Jilma L Patrick, Analeta N Peterson, 

Anthony Simms, Kelly Ariel Stewart, Ellana Stinson, Britt Stone, Princess Nicole 

Thomas, Dominic Frederick Tutera, Phillip G Walton Jr 

Alumni: Claudia Rose Baquet, Reginald William Coopwood 

Faculty: Thomas J Limbird 

East Tennessee State University James H Quillen College of Medicine—Delta 

Tennessee 

Students: Bethany Mayes Bessom, DeAnna Britton Brown, Michael Ryan Buckley, 

Michael James Chambers, Sarah Ann Harris, Jennifer Lea Sauceman, Kathryn Ellen 

Shipp, Landon Everett Stigall, Kelvin S Wilson 

House staff: Charles David Cesare Jr, Amanda Guedes de Morais Costa 

TEXAS 

University of Texas Medical Branch, University of Texas Medical School at 

Galveston—Alpha Texas 

Students: William Boggan Albright, Jessica Allen, Shashi Alloju, Jared Chiarchiaro, 

Zeeshan Danawala, Jeanine Louise Davis, Theodore Kenneth Mitchell DeMartini, 

Holly Elsbeth Dunn, Emmaneul Edson, Norman Miles Farr, Edgar Eduardo 

Fernandez, Rochelle Marie Gore, Justin Robert Gyorfi, Honey H Herce, Jeffrey 

Hughes, Justin David Hughes, Alisa Kachikis, Enchun Mike Liu, Michael Robert 

McEntire, Kristina Helen Mitchell, Joshua Michael Mourot, Lori Mae Murphy, Tara 

Paige Lynn Neubrand, John Kindley Ray, Robert Ray Reynolds, Cameron Woodward 

Schick, Leslie Scroggins, Justin Serrette, Nabeel Ibrahim Uwaydah, Eriel Heather 

Wallace, Andrew Moore Watson, Kathryn Wiesman, Stephen Dale Wilkins Jr, Blair 

Allen Winegar, Christopher Cox Wright, Christopher Alan York 

Faculty: Ben G Raimer, Roger D Soloway 

House staff: Stephanie Therese Chung, Terrell Ann Singleton 

Baylor College of Medicine—Beta Texas 

Students: Zaina Nabil Al-Mohtaseb, John Joseph Brinkley, Lisa Katherine Colaco, 

Brandon Nicholas Devers, Sara Childress Fallon, John Matthew Felder III, Deborah 

Anne Forst, Katherine Lefevre Freundlich, Andrea Louise Goodrich, Loyola 

Veronique Gressot, William Marshall Guy, Peter Michael Hannon, Gwendolyn Maria 

Bethenis Hoben, Shaina Beth Horwitz, Timothy Frank Hsu, Kurt David Icenogle, 

William Forrest Johnston, Anna maria Litvak, Vikram Marocha, Robert Ryan 

McMillan, Jennifer Leigh McQuade, Zeyad Ahmed Metwalli, Adam Vogeler Meyer, 

Shannon Marie Mitchell, Andrew Scot Nett, Ambili Ramachandran, Alyssa May 

Randall, Kjirsten Anne Swenson, Carl Peter Walther, Brian Joseph Wisnoski 

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Southwestern 

Medical School—Gamma Texas 

Students: Veeral Haresh Ajmera, Gobind Anand, Jarrod Dale, Elaine L Duryea, Sabih 

Tariq Effendi, Daniel Gebhard, Christian Burris Gocke, Randall Berton Graham, 

Nathan Gray, Blake Elizabeth Gregory, Anne Catherine Hofer, Katherine E Hollimon- 

Murphy, Jennifer Leigh Holmes, Jason Keene, Paras Khandheria, David Samuel 

Kroll, Samuel Kuzminski, Jashua Langston, Laura Ley, Christopher Daniel Maroules, 

Heather Mattick, Andrew Miner, Roshan Pradip Morbia, Whitney Jo Morgan, 

Purushottam Achyut Nagarkar, Chad Newton, Kaveh Nezafati, Likheng Ngov, 

Phuong-Khanh Jessica Nguyen-Trong, Martin Brett Raynor, Shahed Shakouri, Kathy 

Lynd Stretch, Ryan Metri Taylor, Andrew Unzeitig, Michael David Van Hal, Evan 

Walgama, Beth M Boulden Warren, Brett Whittemore, Melissa Rasar Young 

Alumni: Steven Louis Bloom 

Faculty: Byron L Cryer, Daniel K Podolsky, John Sadler 

House staff: Mary McCord, Daniel P Sherbet 

University of Texas Medical School at Houston—Delta Texas 

Students: Stephanie Lynne Adrianse, Abib Agbetoba, Lea Lynne Bardy, Allison Marie 

Boyle, Kelly B Conner, Heath Taylor Crawford, Allison Rae DeGreeff, Alexis Leah 

Dougherty, John Randall Griffin, Sarah Kathleen Happe, Kevin Hoffman, Brian Scott 

Hurlburt, Adam Brian King, Robert James Lentz, Michael Clinton Leslie, Lawren 

Ann Love, John Christopher McAuliffe, Stephen Wayne Metting, Benjamin Baines 

Mize, Michael David Monaco, Megan Nicole Moody, Ann Bich Nguyen, Jeffrey 

Ryan Parker, Nathan Priddy, Michael David Richter, Lilit Sargsyan, Nathan Ryan 

Smallwood, Michael Jayson Soileau, Megan Elyse Speer, Darrell Wallace Wilcox, 

Terra Wubbenhorst, Sara Yazdani, John Mark Zimmerman, Melanie Elizabeth Zuo 

Faculty: Akinsansoye K Dosekun, Nicole Renee Gonzales 

House staff: Angela Cheng, Supriya Singh, Ramal Majintha Silva Weragoda 

University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio—Epsilon Texas 

Students: Sarah Borgognoni, Ashley Michelle Brumm, Stacey Colias Carter, John 

David Cluley, Christian Andrews Corbitt, Travis McFarlane Cotton, Pamela Marie 

Deaver, Prashant Arun Desai, Lucia Diaz, Laura Marie Dominguez, Angela LeeAnn 

Duckworth, Molly Katherine Dudley, Jason C Goodwin, Anasuya Gunturi, Jeromy 

Todd Hackney, Katherine Lee Hayes, Jacquelyn Audria Jetton, Stacy Kaiser, Theresa 

Nguyen Kinard, Casey Lee Lagan, Jamie Tranter Larsen, Meng Lu, John Matthew 

Martin IV, Jorge Antonio Montes, Myrna Rita Nahas, Donna Nguyen, Jacqueline 

Ann Rellas, Michael Carlyle Scott, Angela Diane Shedd, Hayden Wilson Stagg, Ashlie 

Renee Stowers, Jennifer Jill Street, Melissa Webb, Kirsten Ann Wennermark, Randy 

Yeh 

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine—Zeta 

Texas 

Students: Christopher Ang, Stephanie Christine Baker, Joseph Brading, Katie Brading, 

Catherine H Do, Aaron Joseph Greenberg, Jason Jones, Harold Levine, Desiree Ann 

Marshall, Karen Rosa Nunez-Wallace, John M Paddack, Purvak Patel, Fernanda P 

Payan, Jennifer Pick, Amanda Pickert, Taylor Ratcliff, Amy Klavin Schutt, Robert 

Clark Schutt III, Jeffrey Smith, Mary Loraine Sullivan, Carey Lane Watson 

The Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine—Eta Texas 

Students: Mujtaba Mohammed Ali, Puya Alikhani, Jessica Renee Barnes, Shannon 

Amber Covey, David Patrick Galloway, Evan Lowell Hardegree, Tiffany Daisy Joe, 

Adeel Navaid Khan, Ravi Kumar, Karina Minyarova Parr, Kushal Vikram Patel, 

Augustah Jeremiah Poutre, John Charles Reneau, Tamara Lynn Small 

Faculty: William C Culp Jr, Robert Wilton Pryor 

House staff: Krista Lynn Birkemeier, Constance O’Bryan Cleaves 

UTAH 

University of Utah School of Medicine—Alpha Utah 

Students: Kathleen Ann Daetwyler, Andrew John Dorais, Katherine Marie Jessop, 

Benjamin Fredrick Johnson, Tamara Leigh Kemp, Krista Irene Kinard, John Rohland 

Kotter, Garrett C Lowe, David Brent Mabey, Mac Lee Machan, Johan Mohebali, 

Joseph Stapley Redman, Debra S Regier, Tyler Sorensen, Stephen Melvin Squires, 

Jaclyn Kerr Tygesen, Brad Wright 

VERMONT 

University of Vermont College of Medicine—Alpha Vermont 

Students: Jared Andrew Blum, Andrew Clayton Boyer, Anna Bramley Catino, 

Elizabeth D Duncan, Alison Frank Fitzgerald, Michael Allen Goedde, Linnea Rose 

Goodman, Mark Adam Horton, Ananda Keefer-Norris, Erica Bove Mahany, Ian C 

McCormick, Russell Edward Meyer, Jared Kevin Pearson, Justin Thomas Pitman, 

Jodi McQuillen Roque, Elizabeth Wisely Siefert, Campbell Lamont Stewart, Melinda 

Lynne Yushak 

VIRGINIA 

University of Virginia School of Medicine—Alpha Virginia 

Students: Jessica Marie Bobula, Rebecca Casey Burke, Mark Glenn Cathey, James 

Walker Click, Ramsey Joseph Daher, Marisa Ann DeGaetani, Sean Daniel Foster, 

Jason Michael Franasiak, Kristen Virginia Gandee, Brian Christopher Gross, Samuel 

Kenney Houston III, Brian Bishop Hughley, Amber Turner Inofuentes, Robert 

Wallace Krell, Patrick Charles LaRochelle, Devin Dean Mackay, James Alexander 

Platts-Mills, Douglas Arbogast Rahn III, Bradley Norman Reames, Ellen Wells 

Richter, Joseph Aaron Sivak, Elizabeth Miles Whitman, Megan Shaw Wilson, Ashraf 

Mohamed Youssef 

House staff: Carlos Tache-Leon 

Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine—Beta Virginia 

Students: Cassandra L Aboy, Keith Robert Bachmann, Jemilat Olapeju Badamas, 

William Thomas Brand III, Christopher George Brown, Jessica Leigh Caldwell, Erin 

Katherine Brown Davis, Susan Peng Demarest, Branden Michael Engorn, Adriana 

Faulkner, Adam Garber, Talia Glasberg, Rebecca Marie Habenicht, Michael M Hakky, 

Mohammed Arslan Hanif, Audra Jolyn Hill, Lauren Nichole Huddle, Sarah Jane 

Iglehart, Shannon Jeanine Miller, Vicky Thi Nguyen, Amar P Patel, Jasmine Patterson, 

Robert Boyd Rawles, Andrew William Scharf, Crystal Meera Shrestha, Phillip A 



Taylor, David Paul Timler, Monica Gabrielle Velasquez, Ann Miller Wilson, Henry 

Wong 

Alumni: Mark D Okusa 

Faculty: Stephanie A Call, Huan N Vu 

House staff: Christopher Cost 

Eastern Virginia Medical School —Gamma Virginia 

Students: Nayef Antar Abouzaki, Rebecca Leigh Chain, Deboki Nandan Chaudhuri, 

Kathleen Sabina Dunbar, Michael Anthony Holliday, Adam George Ligler, Elizabeth 

Rose Lunsford, Melissa San Julian Mark, Caitlyn Marie Molino, Zeal Patel, Crystal 

Miller Proud, Jennifer Huyen Ta, Christopher S Thomas, Brian David Thorp, Krista 

Marie Turner, Gregory Stephen Weingart, Jessemae Lynn Welsh 

Alumni: Mark E Skees, Michele Rohe Wadsworth 

Faculty: Benjamin Mitchell Goodman III, Moss Mendelson 

House staff: Thomas Stephen Higgins Jr, Shervin Albert Kharazmi 

WASHINGTON 

University of Washington School of Medicine—Alpha Washington 

Students: Marisa Linnell Alunni, Mayan Bomsztyk, Brian Byrne, Laura Certain, Kyle 

J Chambers, Cameron Chesnut, Earl Michael Chester, Steven Bradley Daines, Daniel 

Robert Drozd, Jarred Marshal Freese, Christina Eide Grady, Katherine Lynn Harris, 

Phillip Hochwalt, Jesse Joel Keller, Meghan Mullarkey Kiefer, BreAnna Kinghorn, 

Andrew Mesher, Anna Metcalfe, Emily Anne Olsen, Brannon Rodriguez Orton, 

Nathaniel Beecher Paull, Abigail Ruby Plawman, Gene Ryan Quinn, Melissa M 

Roberts, James Ronald, Michael Isiah Sandlin, Melissa Anne Sheiko, Amanda Kay 

Shepherd, Laura Elizabeth Stoll, Corinee Taraska, Martha Clinton Wilson, Samuel 

George Wittekind, Weiya Zhang 

Faculty: Joseph Francis O’Neill, Richard Bucani Utarnachitt 

House staff: Edmond Ardeshir Marzbani, Toby Isaac Sinton 

WEST VIRGINIA 

West Virginia University School of Medicine—Alpha West Virginia 

Students: Brad Patrick Barnes, Michael Patrick Bronson, Daniel R DiGiovine, Joseph 

Donahue, Roopan Elizabeth Fischer, Matthew Anthony Joseph, Sharon R 

Maas, Rachel Leanne McClung, Evan Morgan, Nicholas Rice Phillips, Michael 

Ruffolo, Julie Balch Samora, Jason Turner, Kevin Michael Walsh, Adrienne Newlon 

Zavala, Zachary Allen Zinn 

Faculty: Rosemarie Cannarella Lorenzetti 

House staff: April Michele Baisden, Raveen Raviendran, Joel Bernard Yednock 

Joan C Edwards School of Medicine at Marshall University—Beta West 

Virginia 

Students: Stephen Joseph Balevic, Michael Ryan Black, Todd Michael Derreberry, 

Sarah K Flaherty, David Justin Hall, Sydnee Smirl McElroy, Ryan Morrison, Katie 

Lynn Osley 

Faculty: John Tracy Walker, Sasha Zill 

House staff: Waseem Ostwani, Anita R Sayre 

WISCONSIN 

University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health—Alpha 

Wisconsin 

Students: Brittany Allen, Michael Leo Boisen, Michelle Boockmeier, Sean Michael 

Bruggink, Analisa Maria Calderon, Alexandra Cameli, Dustin Carlson, DeAnna 

Friedman, Adam David Gepner, Ashley Christine Goodwin, Allison Rebecca Hotujec, 

Anne Kolan, Micah Thomas Long, Brenton M Meier, Sarah Meister, Christopher 

Aloysius Mueller, Andrew Donald Navarrete, Matthew C Niesen, Philipp Werner 

Raess, Daniel J Repp, Adam Philip Siegel, Nyama Sillah, Jill Marie Stein, Julie R 

Sullivan, Sara Helena Tikkanen, Rachel Uttech, Aimee C Walsh, Crystal Weis, Paul 

David Weyker 

Medical College of Wisconsin—Beta Wisconsin 

Students: Jonathan S Anderson, Christian Becker, Joseph Richard Behn, Daniel 

Edward Cannon, Deana Lynn Choi, Erica Yihlee Chou, Amanda Nicole Cooper, 

Jamie Thomas Frazier Frantz, Luke T Fraundorf, Danita Rose Hahn, Katie Rose 

Hausmann, Christopher Ryan Henry, Hilary H Hill, William D Holmes, Zachary Scott 

Jager, Benjamin C Kautza, Barbara Joan Kraynek, Andrew Arthur Robert Lehman, 

Jacques Alan Machol IV, Scott Thomas McEwen, Deepa Pawar, Erik Jordan Peterson, 

Preston Wilson Roberts, Jesse David Stringer, Steven Allan Sumner, Andrew James 

Szymanski, Daniel F Tensmeyer, Shannon Tew, Scott Von Larson, Kara Elizabeth 

Walton, Michael Leigh Wells, Matthew Dean Wheatley, John Parley Winkler, Sara 

Elizabeth Wordingham 

Alumni: Charles Bruce Green 

Faculty: Beth B Krippendorf, Theodore G MacKinney 

House staff: Jason Elias Gonzaga, Joshua L Morrison, Mark Jonathan Sytsma 

Students 2676 

Alumni 78 

Faculty 145 

House staff 179 

Total number of new members 3078 

The Turning Time 

(For Papa) 

The parting pain seems greatest when is known 

that sinking of the heart transformed to stone, 

a morphing wrought within a moment’s space 

when comes the final turning of the face. 

For long as on the countenance is plain 

a look of chance the loved one may remain, 

a hopeful heart can thus afford to save 

its last goodbye for blessing at the grave. 

Now looking back upon the turning time 

when first my ears perceived a funeral chime, 

that tearful tolling, calling him away 

before my soul its eulogy could say, 

I marvel at my mourning nearly done 

though hours remain till setting of his sun. 

And yet, I know, in turning he did see 

the Face of Love, and will eternally. 

Daniel C. Potts, MD 

Dr. Potts (AΩA, University of South Alabama, 1992) is an assistant 

professor at the College of Community Health Sciences at 

the University of Alabama. His address: 100 Rice Mine Loop Road, 

Suite 301, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35406. E-mail: dpotts@nctpc.com. 

58 The Pharos/Autumn 2009 

Erica Aitken

Sunbeam egg cooker 

This is a CT scan of an aluminum Sunbeam Egg Cooker, 

one of the most elegant electronic household appliances ever 

made. The scan shows every part beautifully. Just under the 

lid, we see the optional egg poacher (golden color) whose 

central handle can barely be appreciated. Just below that, we 

see the egg rack in a slightly purplish hue. It can be easily 

identified as the plate with several circles cut out. Then comes 

the water reservoir, and finally, the heating element in red surrounded 

by the switch mechanisms and wiring. The engineering 

of this piece is elegant as well. It features a mechanism that 

can sense when the water has boiled off and can automatically 

shut the appliance off. This mechanism is better seen by viewing 

the three-dimensional movie at www.radiologyart.com. 

Satre Stuelke is a third-year medical student at Weill Cornell Medical 

College. He has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute 

of Chicago, has shown his work across the globe, and has taught at 

many prestigious institutions including the School of Visual Arts 

in Manhattan. His address is: 

420 E. 70th Street #12L 

New York, New York 10021 

E-mail: sws2002@med.cornell.edu 

The Pharos/Issue Date 59

The Pharos 

Volume 72 

Index by author 

Adler KP. See Schwartz RA et al. 

Aronson V. Palliatives. Poem. Winter, 72. 

Azman BK. Empty memory album discarded by the curb. Poem. Spring, 36. 

Barone JE. More real doctors in the movies. Letter. Winter, 56. 

Baruch J. Henderson’s Equation, by Jerome Lowenstein. Reviews and reflections. 

Winter, 50–51. 

Belsky JL. 1955: Polio and the bomb. Letter. Winter, 55. 

Bevins MB. Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed 

Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on 

Prescription Drugs, by Melody Peterson. Reviews and reflections. Summer, 

46–47. 

Blum A. I don’t know how to start. Poem and sketch. Autumn, 12. 

Blum A. Seeing Patients. Poem and sketch. Spring, 35. 

Brandt L. See Ratanawongsa N et al. 

Bronson R. What Kind of Guy? Poem. Winter, 58. 

Brust JCM. Splendors and Miseries of the Brain: Love, Creativity, and the Quest 

for Human Happiness, by Semir Zeki. Reviews and reflections. Autumn, 39–40. 

Bykowski MR. The World Is Sleeping. Poem. Spring, 46. 

Cade GT. Remembering to forget. Spring, 12–15. 

Carracio BB. Empty memory album discarded by the curb. Poem. Spring, 37. 

Carrasco D. The dreaded burnout. Letter. Summer, 42. 

Carter HR. Time for change in AΩA. Letter. Summer, 41. 

Carter HR. Health care reform. Letter. Winter, 57. 

Charles G. More real doctors in the movies. Letter. Winter, 55–56. 

Chesanow RL. A Voyage. Poem. Summer, 32. 

Christensen RC. The language of care: Taking psychiatry to the streets. Summer, 

36–39. 

Christmas C. See Ratanawongsa N et al. 

Claman HN. Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, by 

Peter Watson. Reviews and reflections. Autumn, 38–39. 

Coulehan J. Life in the Balance: A Physician’s Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss with 

Parkinson’s Disease and Dementia, by Thomas Graboys with Peter Zheutlin. 

Reviews and reflections. Spring, 43–45. 

Coulehan J. The Light Within: The Extraordinary Story of a Doctor and Patient 

Brought Together by Cancer, by Lois S. Ramondetta and Deborah Rose Sills. 

Reviews and reflections. Spring, 43–45. 

Cross S. Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO): Student on Pediatric 

Surgery. Poem. Winter, 9. 

Crawford GB. Monstrosity, medicine, and misunderstanding: The infamy and 

polemics of the twentieth-century literary giant Louis-Ferdinand Céline. 

Summer, 14–22. 

Crumpecker C. Pediatric Traumatic Injury at City Park, July 2008. Poem. 

Autumn, 48. 

Dans PE. The physician at the movies 

3:10 to Yuma (1957). Spring, 40–41 

3:10 to Yuma (2007). Spring, 41 

The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher). Autumn, 35–36 

The Horse Soldiers. Winter, 45–46 

Man on Wire. Spring, 38–39 

Slumdog Millionaire. Autumn, 32–34 

Stagecoach (1939). Winter, 42–45 

Egnor M. When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery, by Frank 

Vertosick, Jr. Reviews and reflections. Winter, 47–48. 

Eubanks JD. Full Nelson. Poem. Spring, inside back cover. 

Eubanks JD. Marionette. Poem. Spring, 25. 

Federowicz MA. See Ratanawongsa N et al. 

Finklea L. The half-tico, half-gringo robot. Spring, 32–34. 

Fokes EC Jr. Movies: profanity, nudity, and violence. Letter. Summer, 44. 

Foxworth J. Academic uses for The Pharos. Letter. Autumn, 43. 

Foy J. Empty memory album discarded by the curb. Poem. Spring, 36. 

Gajera V. Betrayal. Poem. Autumn, 20. 

Gamble JG, Pena T, Rinsky LA. New medical terms. Spring, 26–28. 

Gass HH. Tic Douloureux. Poem. Autumn, 13. 

Gianakos D. Breaking Good News. Poem. Winter, back cover. 

Gianakos D. Memory Lessons: A Doctor’s Story, by Jerald Winakur. Reviews and 

reflections. Summer, 48–49. 

Gimbrone MA et al. See Nathan DG et al. 

Glick S. Be careful of chicken soup. Letter. Winter, 57. 

Golden G. Locked-in syndrome. Letter. Spring, 50. 

Harris ED Jr. 2009 Alpha Omega Alpha Professionalism Fellowship. Autumn, 44. 

Harris ED Jr. Alpha Omega Alpha and health policy. Autumn, 1. 

Harris ED Jr. 2008 Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher 


Awards. Winter, 52–53. 

Harris ED Jr. Accelerating human evolution. Editorial. Summer, 1. 

Harris ED Jr. Alpha Omega Alpha elects honorary members. Spring 54–56. 

Harris ED Jr. AΩA membership—more than high GPA: Editor’s note. Letter. 

Spring, 52–53. 

Harris ED Jr. The dreaded burnout. Editorial. Winter, 1. 

Harris ED Jr. Marat and Harvey, revolutionaries. Editorial. Spring, 1. 

Harris ED Jr. Minutes of the 2008 meeting of the board of directors of Alpha 

Omega Alpha. National and chapter news. Spring, 47–48. 

Hartnett SR. An Intern Begs a Suffering Patient for Mercy at 3 am. Poem. 

Autumn, 24. 

Hayashi J. See Ratanawongsa N et al. 

Hellmann DB. See Ratanawongsa N et al. 

Hines JZ. Exposed. Autumn, 21–23. 

Howell EE. See Ratanawongsa N et al. 

Hubbart H. Empty memory album discarded by the curb. Poem. Spring, 37. 

Imperato PJ. Selling Teaching Hospitals and Practice Plans: George Washington 

and Georgetown, by John A. Kastor. Reviews and reflections. Summer, 47–48. 

Isenberg SF. Four Season Haiku. Poem. Spring, 29. 

Isenberg SF. Office Hours. Poem. Spring, 45. 

Johnson WW. Re “Wrongful death.” Letter. Winter, 54. 

Kirk ST. This is when it happens. Autumn, 10–11. 

Langhorne H. 4 West. Poem. Summer, 45. 

Le J. My Eye Doctor. Poem. Winter, inside back cover. 

Levin ML. For Whom the Bell Tolls and “New Medical Terms.” Letter. Autumn, 

43. 

Lo MD. Be still, my (irregularly) beating heart. Winter, 10–12. 

Lazarus A. More real doctors in the movies. Letter. Winter, 56. 

Macht M. Large and noble lines: The life of Howard P. Lewis, American College 

of Physicians president, 1959–1960. Summer, 24–31 

Magill CF. See Ratanawongsa N et al. 

Manganiello P. The U.S. crisis in health care. Letter. Summer, 43. 

Mark JBD. Calling Dr. Laennec! Letter. Winter, 56–57. 

Martinez-Maldonado M. Burning Books. Poem. Spring, 16. 

Meyer JL II. More real doctors in the movies. Letter. Winter, 56. 

Miday GH. Drinking in earnest: Alcoholic paradigms in Hemingway’s For Whom 

the Bell Tolls. Spring, 4–11. 

Minor S. I Am the Patient. Poem. Spring, 49. 

Moore JT. Once. Poem. Summer, inside back cover. 

Moore M. Memorial. Poem. Autumn, inside back cover. 

Morgenstern L. Samuel Johnson and I. Winter, 14–17. 

Moroff S. New medical terms. Letter. Summer, 43–44. 

Moser RH. Medical illiteracy. Letter. Winter, 54–55. 

Moser RH. Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin comes to medicine—redux. Autumn, 

26–30. 

Nakayama DK. Seishu Hanaoka, surgery, and anesthesia in feudal Japan. Winter, 

35–40. 

Nathan DG, Gimbrone MA. Judah Folkman, MD: 1933–2008. Winter, 4–8. 

Nesbitt REL Jr. Overdrawn. Poem. Summer, 15. 

Owen DS Jr. Re “Wrongful death.” Letter. Winter, 54. 

Papa CM. Empty memory album discarded by the curb. Poem. Spring, 37. 

Pavenski K. Little Star. Poem. Summer, 14. 

Pearson J. The Mugging. Poem. Autumn, 42. 

Pena T. See Gamble JG et al. 

Pfeiffer E. Before Everything. Poem. Summer, 13. 

Pfeiffer E. Do Old Men Dream? Poem. Winter, 13. 

Pick JW. Poetry—perhaps best read aloud. Letter. Spring, 53. 

Pierce C. AΩA membership—more than high GPA. Letter. Spring, 51–52. 

Pitkin RM. Maternal mortality and world history: The case of Princess Charlotte 

of Wales. Winter, 22–34. 

Platt FW. Patient Listening: A Doctor’s Guide, by Loreen Herwaldt. Reviews and 

reflections. Winter, 49–50. 

Porter GH. Re “Wrongful death.” Letter. Winter, 54. 

Potts D. The Turning Time. Poem. Autumn, 58. 

Phillips-Conroy JE. Election to AΩA. Letter. Summer, 41. 

Rand CS. See Ratanawongsa N et al. 

Ratanawongsa N, Rand CS, Magill CF, Hayashi J, Brandt L, Christmas C, Record 

JD, Howell EE, Federowicz MA, Hellmann DB, Ziegelstein RC. Teaching 

residents to know their patients as individuals: The Aliki Initiative at Johns 

Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Summer, 4–11. 

Reavey K. Itinerary, 1974. Poem. Autumn, 64. 

Reavey K. Newark or Dallas, Milan or Munich. Poem. Autumn, 64. 

Record JD. See Ratanawongsa N et al. 

Reilly J. Isabella. Winter, 18–20. 

Rinsky LA. See Gamble JG et al. 

Rosenberg LB. Numbers. Poem. Autumn, 37. 

Ryan WH. War story: The conflict in narrative- and evidence-based medicine. 

Autumn, 14–19. 

Salomon B. Nursing Home Villanelle. Poem. Winter, 21. 

Schidlow DV. Welcome to AΩA. Poem. Winter, 63. 

Schreiber MH. Little Boy. Poem. Summer, 40. 

Schreiber MH. Shut Up. Poem. Winter, 59. 

Schwartz RA, Adler KP. Physician-statesmen. Letter. Winter, 57–58. 

Shafer A. The Orange Wire Problem and Other Tales from the Doctor’s Office, by 

David Watts. Reviews and reflections. Autumn, 40–41. 

Shankar PR. Anatomy—with or without a cadaver. Letter. Spring, 50–51. 

Sophie Davis Student Government. Medical Student Service Project Award, 

the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education at the City College of New 

York—The Sophie Davis Health Fair. Summer, 51–52. 

Sreeraman R. Bridge. Poem. Winter, 41. 

Staff 

2009 Alpha Omega Alpha Carolyn L. Kuckein Student Research Fellowships. 


2009 Alpha Omega Alpha Helen H. Glaser Student Essay Awards. Autumn, 

47 

2009 Pharos Poetry Competition winners. Summer, 44 

2009 Write a Poem for This Photo Contest. Summer, 12 

Alpha Omega Alpha Administrative Recognition Awards, 2008/2009. 

Autumn, 44 

Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Student Service Project Awards, 2008/2009. 

Autumn, 47 

Alpha Omega Alpha members elected in 2007/2008. Winter, 64–72 

Alpha Omega Alpha members elected in 2008/2009. Autumn, 50–58 

Alpha Omega Alpha visiting professorships, 2008/2009. Autumn, 45–46 

Alpha Omega Alpha Volunteer Clinical Faculty Awards, 2008/2009. Autumn, 

48 

Announcing the 2009 Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished 

Teacher Awards. Spring, 47 

Announcing the 2009 Pharos Editor’s Prize. Winter, 61 

Instructions for Pharos Authors. Winter, 61–63 

Leaders in American Medicine. Winter, 62 

The Pharos, Volume 72. Autumn, 60–62 

Submit a photo for the next “Write a Poem for This Photo Contest.” Autumn, 

63 

Two new members for the Pharos editorial board. National and chapter 

news. Summer, 51 

Welcome to our new health policy section. Autumn, 25 

Winners of the 2008 Pharos Editor’s Prize. Winter, 60–61 

Winners of the 2009 Write a Poem for This Photo Contest. Autumn, 64. 

Stevenson TN. The power of language in medicine—Case study: Mongolism. 


Stuelke S. Sunbeam egg cooker. Photo. Autumn, 59. 

Tinling D. The dreaded burnout. Letter. Summer, 42. 

Tou C. Anatomy. Poem. Autumn, 49. 

Turton FE. James Harvey Young and medical education. Letter. Winter, 58. 

Woodard JD. Marat’s terror. Spring, 17–24. 

Wrzosek M. The dreaded burnout. Letter. Summer, 42–43. 

Yamanuha J. E Unum ... Pluribus. Poem. Autumn, 31. 

Zaret BL. The Jewish Home for the Aged. Poem. Summer, 50. 

Zaroff L. Completing the circle. Spring, 30–31. 

Ziegelstein RC. See Ratanawongsa N et al. 

Zwahlen-Minton D. Geriatric Bioscience: The Link Between Aging and Disease, by 

David Hamerman. Reviews and reflections. Spring, 42. 

Index by title 

2008 Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Awards. Harris 

ED Jr. Winter, 52–53. 

2009 Alpha Omega Alpha Carolyn L. Kuckein Student Research Fellowships. 

Staff. Summer, 33–35. 

2009 Alpha Omega Alpha Helen H. Glaser Student Essay Awards. Staff. Autumn, 

47. 

2009 Alpha Omega Alpha Professionalism Fellowship. Harris ED Jr. Autumn, 44. 

2009 Write a Poem for This Photo Contest. Staff. Summer, 12. 

4 West. Poem. Langhorne H. Summer, 45. 

A Voyage. Poem. Chesanow RL. Summer, 32. 

Accelerating human evolution. Editorial. Harris ED Jr. Summer, 1. 

Alpha Omega Alpha Administrative Recognition Awards, 2008/2009. Staff. 

Autumn, 44. 

Alpha Omega Alpha and health policy. Editorial. Harris ED Jr. Autumn, 1. 


Alpha Omega Alpha elects honorary members. Harris ED Jr. Spring, 54–56. 

Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Student Service Project Awards, 2008/2009. Staff. 

Autumn, 47. 

Alpha Omega Alpha members elected in 2007/2008. Staff. Winter, 64–72. 

Alpha Omega Alpha members elected in 2008/2009. Staff. Autumn, 50–58. 

Alpha Omega Alpha visiting professorships, 2008/2009. Staff. Autumn, 45–46. 

Alpha Omega Alpha Volunteer Clinical Faculty Awards, 2008/2009. Staff. 

Autumn, 48. 

An Intern Begs a Suffering Patient for Mercy at 3 am. Poem. Hartnett SR. 

Autumn, 24. 

Anatomy. Poem. Tou C. Autumn, 49. 

Be still, my (irregularly) beating heart. Winter, 10–12. 

Before Everything. Poem. Pfeiffer E. Summer, 13. 

Betrayal. Poem. Gajera V. Autumn, 20. 

Breaking Good News. Poem. Gianakos D. Winter, back cover. 

Bridge. Poem. Sreeraman R. Winter, 41. 

Burning Books. Poem. Martinez-Maldonado M. Spring, 16. 

Completing the circle. Zaroff L. Spring, 30–31. 

Do Old Men Dream? Poem. Pfeiffer E. Winter, 13. 

Dreaded burnout, The. Editorial. Harris ED Jr. Winter, 1. 

Drinking in earnest: Alcoholic paradigms in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell 

Tolls. Miday GH. Spring, 4–11. 

E Unum ... Pluribus. Poem. Yamanuha J. Autumn, 31. 

Empty memory album discarded by the curb. Poem. 

Azman BK. Spring, 36 

Caraccio BB. Spring, 37 

Foy J. Spring, 36 

Hubbard H. Spring, 37 

Papa CM. Spring, 37 

Exposed. Hines JZ. Autumn, 21–23. 

Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO): Student on Pediatric Surgery. 

Poem. Winter, 9. 

Four Season Haiku. Poem. Isenberg SF. Spring, 29. 

Full Nelson. Poem. Eubanks JD. Spring, inside back cover. 

I Am the Patient. Poem. Minor S. Spring, 49. 

I don’t know how to start. Poem and sketch. Blum A. Autumn, 12. 

An Intern Begs a Suffering Patient for Mercy at 3 am. Poem. Hartnett SR. 

Autumn, 24. 

Isabella. Reilly J. Winter, 18–20. 

Itinerary, 1974. Poem. Reavey K. Autumn, 64. 

Jewish Home for the Aged, The. Poem. Zaret BL. Summer, 50. 

Judah Folkman, MD: 1933–2008. Nathan DG, Gimbrone MA. Winter, 4–8. 

Language of care, The: Taking psychiatry to the streets. Christensen RC. 


Large and noble lines: The life of Howard P. Lewis, American College of 

Physicians president, 1959–1960. Macht M. Summer, 24–31. 

Letters to the editor 

1955: Polio and the bomb. Belsky JL. Winter, 55 

Academic uses for The Pharos. Foxworth J. Autumn, 43 

Anatomy—with or without a cadaver. Shankar PR. Spring, 50–51 

AΩA membership—more than high GPA. Pierce C. Spring, 51–52 

AΩA membership—more than high GPA: Editor’s note. Harris ED Jr. Spring, 

52–53 

Be careful of chicken soup. Glick S. Winter, 57 

Calling Dr. Laennec! Mark JBD. Winter, 56–57 

Dreaded burnout, The. 

Carrasco C. Summer, 42 

Tinling D. Summer, 42 

Wrzosek M. Summer, 42–43 

Election to AΩA. Phillips-Conroy JE. Summer, 41 

For Whom the Bell Tolls and “New Medical Terms.” Levin ML. Autumn, 43 

Health care reform. Carter HR. Winter, 57 

James Harvey Young and medical education. Turton FE. Winter, 58 

Locked-in syndrome. Golden G. Spring, 50 

Medical illiteracy. Moser RH. Winter, 54–55 

More real doctors in the movies 

Barone JE. Winter, 56 

Charles G. Winter, 56 

Lazarus A. Winter, 56 

Meyer JL II. Winter, 56 

Movies: profanity, nudity, and violence. Fokes EC Jr. Summer, 44 

New medical terms. Moroff S. Summer, 44 

Physician-statesmen. Schwartz RA, Adler KP. Winter, 57–58 

Poetry—perhaps best read aloud. Pick JW. Spring, 53 

Re “Wrongful death” 

Johnson WW. Winter, 54 

Owen DS Jr. Winter, 54 

Porter GH. Winter, 54 

Time for change in AΩA. Carter HR. Summer, 41 

U.S. crisis in health care, The. Manganiello P. Summer, 43 

Little Boy. Poem. Schreiber MH. Summer, 40. 

Little Star. Poem. Pavenski K. Summer, 14. 

Marat and Harvey, revolutionaries. Editorial. Harris ED Jr. Spring, 1. 

Marat’s terror. Woodward JD. Spring, 17–24. 

Marionette. Poem. Eubanks JD. Spring, 25. 

Maternal mortality and world history: The case of Princess Charlotte of Wales. 

Winter, 22–34. 

Memorial. Poem. Moore M. Autumn, inside back cover. 

Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin comes to medicine—redux. Moser RH. Autumn, 

26–30 

Monstrosity, medicine, and misunderstanding: The infamy and polemics of 

the twentieth-century literary giant Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Crawford GB. 


Mugging, The. Poem. Pearson J. Autumn, 42. 

My Eye Doctor. Poem. Le J. Winter, inside back cover. 

National and chapter news 

Announcing the 2009 Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished 

Teacher Awards. Staff. Spring, 47 

Announcing the 2009 Pharos Editor’s Prize. Staff. Winter, 61 

Instructions for Pharos authors. Staff. Winter, 61–62 

Leaders in American Medicine. Staff. Winter, 62 

Medical Student Service Project Award, the Sophie Davis School of 

Biomedical Education at the City College of New York—The Sophie Davis 

Health Fair. Sophie Davis Student Government. Summer, 51–52 

Minutes of the 2008 meeting of the board of directors of Alpha Omega 

Alpha. Harris ED Jr. Spring, 47–48 

Two new members for the Pharos editorial board. Staff. Summer, 51 

Winners of the 2008 Pharos Editor’s Prize. Staff. Winter, 60–61 

New medical terms. Gamble JG, Pena T, Rinsky LA. Spring, 26–28. 

Newark or Dallas, Milan or Munich. Poem. Reavey K. Autumn, 64. 

Numbers. Poem. Rosenberg LB. Autumn, 37. 

Nursing Home Villanelle. Salomon B. Winter, 21. 

Office Hours. Poem. Isenberg SF. Spring, 45. 

Once. Poem. Moore JT. Summer, inside back cover. 

Overdrawn. Poem. Nesbitt REL Jr. Summer, 15. 

Palliatives. Poem. Aronson V. Winter, 72. 

Pediatric Traumatic Injury at City Park, July 2008. Poem. Crumpecker C. 

Autumn, 48. 

Physician at the movies, The. Dans PE 

3:10 to Yuma (1957). Spring, 40–41 

3:10 to Yuma (2007). Spring, 41 

The Cwounterfeiters (Die Fälscher). Autumn, 34–36 

The Horse Soldiers. Winter, 45–46 

Man on Wire. Spring, 38–39 

Slumdog Millionaire. Autumn, 32–34 

Stagecoach (1939). Winter, 42–45 

Power of language in medicine, The—Case study: Mongolism. Stevenson TN. 


Remembering to forget. Cade GT. Spring, 12–15. 

Reviews and reflections. Bennahum DA, Coulehan J, editors. 

Geriatric Bioscience: The Link Between Aging and Disease, by David 

Hamerman. Zwahlen-Minton D. Spring, 42 

Henderson’s Equation, by Jerome Lowenstein. Baruch J. Winter, 50–51 

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, by Peter 

Watson. Claman HN. Autumn, 38–39 

Life in the Balance: A Physician’s Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss with 

Parkinson’s Disease and Dementia, by Thomas Graboys with Peter 

Zheutlin. Coulehan J. Spring, 43–45 

The Light Within: The Extraordinary Story of a Doctor and Patient Brought 

Together by Cancer, by Lois S. Ramondetta and Deborah Rose Sills. 

Coulehan J. Spring, 43–45 

Memory Lessons: A Doctor’s Story, by Jerald Winakur. Gianakos D. Summer, 

48–49. 

The Orange Wire Problem and Other Tales from the Doctor’s Office, by David 

Watts. Shafer A. Autumn, 40–41. 

Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed 

Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on 

Prescription Drugs, by Melody Petersen. Bevins MB. Summer, 46–47. 

Patient Listening: A Doctor’s Guide, by Loreen Herwaldt. Platt FW. Winter, 

49–50 

Selling Teaching Hospitals and Practice Plans: George Washington and 

Georgetown, by John A. Kastor. Imperato PJ. Summer, 47–48 


Splendors and Miseries of the Brain: Love, Creativity, and the Quest for 

Human Happiness, by Semir Zeki. Brust JCM. Autumn, 39–40 

When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery, by Frank Vertosick, 

Jr. Egnor M. Winter, 47–48 

Samuel Johnson and I. Morgenstern L. Winter, 14–17. 

Seeing Patients. Poem and sketch. Blum A. Spring, 35. 

Seishu Hanaoka, surgery, and anesthesia in feudal Japan. Nakayama DK. Winter, 

35–40. 

Shut Up. Poem. Schreiber MH. Winter, 59. 

Submit a photo for the next “Write a Poem for This Photo Contest.” Autumn, 63. 

Sunbeam egg cooker. Photo. Stuelke S. Autumn, 59. 

Teaching residents to know their patients as individuals: The Aliki Initiative at 

Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Ratanawongsa N, Rand CS, Magill 

CF, Hayashi J, Brandt L, Christmas C, Record JD, Howell EE, Federowicz MA, 

Hellmann DB, Ziegelstein RC. Summer, 4–11. 

The Jewish Home for the Aged. Poem. Zaret BL. Summer, 50. 

The language of care: Taking psychiatry to the streets. Christensen RC. Summer, 

37–39. 

The Mugging. Poem. Pearson J. Autumn, 42. 

The Pharos, Volume 72. Staff. Autumn, 60–63. 

The power of language in medicine—Case study: Mongolism. Stevenson TN. 


The Turning Time. Poem. Potts DC. Autumn, 58. 

This is when it happens. Kirk ST. Autumn, 10–11. 

Tic Douloureux. Poem. Gass HH. Autumn, 13. 

Turning Time, The. Poem. Potts DC. Autumn, 58. 

Voyage, A. Poem. Chesanow RL. Summer, 32. 

War story: The conflict in narrative- and evidence-based medicine. Ryan WH. 


Welcome to AΩA. Poem. Schidlow DV. Winter, 63. 

Welcome to our new health policy section. Staff. Autumn, 25. 

What Kind of Guy? Poem. Bronson R. Winter, 58. 

Winners of the 2009 Write a Poem for This Photo Contest. Staff. Autumn, 64. 

World Is Sleeping, The. Poem. Spring, 46. 

Submit a photo for the next “Write a Poem for 

This Photo Contest” 

We are now accepting submissions for a photograph 

to feature in our next Write a Poem for This Photo 

Contest. Submit your photograph by January 1 to: 

Photo Contest 


525 Middlefield Road, Suite 130 

Menlo Park, CA 94025 

One photograph will be chosen for the inspiration for 

our next poetry contest. The winner will have his or her 

photograph published in The Pharos and will receive ten 

copies of the issues in which it appears, as well as a color 

PDF of the layout. There is no cash prize for this contest. 

Contest requirements: 

1. Submit two copies of your photograph, printed 

on 8 x 10-inch glossy photographic/inkjet paper. E-mail 

submissions will not be accepted in this contest. 

2. Your name, address, and e-mail address must be on 

the back of each photograph. 

3. If you are affiliated with The Pharos, including editorial 

board members, employees of the national office 

of AΩA, and contractors, you are not eligible to enter 

this contest. 

4. The photograph must be your own work and must 

not have been submitted elsewhere. The Pharos will have 

the right of first refusal. 

5. You do not have to be an AΩA member to enter 

this contest. 

6. Entries will not be returned. You will be notified by 

e-mail when we receive your submission. 


Winners of the 2009 Write a 

Poem for This Photo Contest 

The contest to write a poem based on the photo below resulted 

in more than sixty submissions. Impressive, too, was 

the diversity of the poets: among the roughly equal numbers 

of men and women, there were forty members of AΩA, seven 

spouses of AΩA members, medical students, and others who 

read The Pharos and decided to take on the challenge. 

The winners of the contest are: Carl Abbott, MD (AΩA, 

Dalhousie University, 1975), of Halifax, Nova Scotia, for 

“Wear Something Red”; Christine D. Hudak, MD (AΩA, Ohio 

State University, 1991), of Mogadore, Ohio, for “Undaunted”; 

Bhagirath Majmudar, MD (AΩA, Emory University, 1979), of 

Atlanta, Georgia, for “A One Bag, One Leg Lady”; Newton 

D. Scherl, MD (AΩA, Marquette Medical School, 1954), of 

Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, for “Reflections on a Photograph”; 

Ali Valdrighi of Granite Bay, California, for “The Woman with 

Everything.” 

The winning poems will be published together in a future 

issue of The Pharos. 

Poet Kate Reavey of Sequim, Washington, who assists us in 

reviewing poems for The Pharos, was intrigued by the photo 

and wrote a couple of poems of her own. Although she is ineligible 

to compete in the contest, we’re publishing her work here 

for your enjoyment. 

Newark or Dallas, Milan or Munich 

No plane in view—just a suggestion of flight— 

the rolling suitcase nestled on the plush couch 

beside her. More companion than container—the bag waits, 

a case where foundation and blush share spaces equally. 

The woman gazes to her right, one bent knee exposed 

so that a thin crease of shadow echoes her natural cleavage— 

calf and thigh relaxing against each other. A lacy edge 

of silk slip peeking out from beneath the tailored skirt tells 

a story of anticipation, of a well-planned journey— 

so much pink and the touch of feather boa 

just trimming her hat—convey the moment and the memories— 

an island sunset? Sipping tea on the Champs-Elysses? 

Still she glances away, and the pursed lips, slouched shoulders 

contradict her spiffy pink, and the slight beige of exposed slip 

seems more accident than flirtation. In another airport, 

a woman is carrying her satchel over the shoulder, 

rushing to meet a man, as if in a field of golden light, 

her calves tensing and flexing with the flight, with the 

motion of finding him, no matter her lithe soles are held 

by tennis shoes, not strappy sandals, cotton socks 

not sheer nylons. From a photograph, 

we can never know the “should haves” 

and “could haves” our lady carries 

in that slim-lipped gaze. Only the weight 

of that black suitcase, handle propped up 

nearly as tall as the woman herself, stealing 

the light away from pale and supple skin 

that once knew its own way to flight. 

Itinerary, 1974 

Perhaps it was a dream, 

she thinks, waiting for a flight 

in an airport where the suitcase 

next to her carries one circle of rouge 

and the hat on her head is trimmed with feathers 

and the shadows have not reached the pale 

cleavage of her breast and leg, the pale 

softness that gentleman, the dream 

of a man she met who loved feathers 

and asked her to take this flight 

loved to touch gently, kindly, the rouge 

on her cheeks no match for her blush. Suitcase 

by her side, she will wait with pursed lips, her suitor 

on the left bank of Paris, what seems now beyond the pale— 

for she has felt this week to be an eternity, and not even the Moulin Rouge 

could have distracted her from the intensity of her dreams. 

Both sleeping and awake, she would while the days into flights 

of fancy, daydreaming her man, the thin tickle of feathers 

on her shoulders and her breast, the lightness of a feather 

was her own dream, for she could not reach her suitor 

could not access him by phone or post, and even this flight 

might be a complete mistake, even as her beautiful, pale 

skin awaits his touch, the hairspray and rouge 

a joke, a misunderstanding, and she, a fool, who dreamed 

this man could have been serious, could dream 

up a plan to rendezvous in Paris. The feathers 

on her pink hat begin to create more shadow than rougetinged 

light. Next to her, the couch accepts the weight of suitcase 

and woman equally, the slouch in her shoulders deepening the pale 

cleavage, and the entire idea of this weekend, this flight 

seems impossible. Still she waits, fights 

the urge to take flight from this dream 

to simply turn away from the memories, pale 

from the distance of days, separating the light, featherlifted 

love from the weight of airport, suitcase, 

the drone of engines cooling, wheels gliding to a stop. Rage 

even, would be justified if the suitcase were packed in vain. 

No. She is determined this time. Her limbs, her foundation and mascara, 

will arrive, will feather the weight of this rosy dream into flight. 

64 The Pharos/Winter 2008

!"#$%&'( 

We may not remember that feeling of fear 

That stirred in our stomachs on our first day here. 

Or the raw recognition of our own defeat 

When we first held a heart that could no longer beat. 

We may not remember the rods and the cones, 

The ethmoid or sphenoid or palatine bones, 

Each circumflex, neural crest, ramus or rectus, 

Or each tiny branch off the cervical plexus. 

We may not remember each page that we read 

About trochlear nerves causing tilt of the head, 

Or the pathways that every red blood cell must take, 

Or which kind of fall leads to which kind of break. 

We may not remember each sulcus or groove, 

Each longus or brevis and how they all move, 

Each pterygoid, coronoid, cristae or carpal, 

Which tendons attach to the first metatarsal. 

The dermatomes, myotomes, orbital veins, 

Adductors, extensors or quadrants of pain. 

Nights spent with books where no one could find us 

To learn just what ends at the pez ancerinus. 

But no matter how long it has been since the days 

Of Moore and Persaud or Netter and Gray’s, 

We will not forget how we all got our start 

And the honest investment of those who took part. 

Margaret Moore 

Ms. Moore is a member of the Class of 2012 at the University of Chicago Division of the Biological Sciences Pritzker School of Medicine. This poem won honorable mention in 

the 2009 Pharos Poetry Competition. The author’s e-mail address is: mbmoore@uchicago.edu.

!"#$%&'()"#$)(*(+"#,- 

�� 

&#)&.)/0/ 

Alpha Omega Alpha necktie or bowtie 

Fashioned from fine silk by Vineyards Vines 

of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. 

Necktie, $45.00 

Bowtie (freestyle), $38.00 

To order, send a check to 


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