July 2017

Speaking Truth To Power: Never Easy, Always Necessary By Leonard Zwelling I only did it a few times. One day the president of MD Anderson who I was serving had a cool idea. He wanted to genotype every patient with cancer (and the cancer, too) that walked through the front doors of MD Anderson and […]

The Real Key Faculty: Those Who Develop A Treatment By Leonard Zwelling For the past twenty years or so, the key to faculty success at MD Anderson has been excelling in the rather traditional metrics of academia—papers, grants and awards. Most of the emphasis has been placed on scientific accomplishment and much of that has

MD Anderson Is Not Immune To The Ravages Of Health Care Reform By Leonard Zwelling What is health care reform anyway? My friend the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein says, “Everyone’s idea of health care reform is the same. I pay less.” That’s pretty much it. Health care reform in America could be about shrinking

Why I Am For The Republican Health Care Bill By Leonard Zwelling Not surprisingly, The New York Times’ editorial page hates the bill that might emerge from the Republican-controlled US Senate. If it at all reflects the House version of the bill it will displace the health insurance of over 20 million Americans, many of

Needed: An Operational Visionary And I Don’t Mean A Surgeon By Leonard Zwelling There is one sure way to improve the balance sheet of MD Anderson. Spend less. It’s already working as June’s financials demonstrated. This seems like an obvious solution, but it is not, because everyone at Anderson is convinced that his or her

The Future Is Texas By Leonard Zwelling http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/10/americas-future-is-texas Austin-based author Lawrence Wright encapsulates my dread with regard to the impending selection of the next president of MD Anderson in an article with this title. In brief, it’s a state-appointed position. In this lengthy piece in The New Yorker of July 10-17, Wright describes the current

The Danger Of Cliques By Leonard Zwelling When I began my lab training at the National Cancer Institute, I had a friend. He had recruited me into the lab in which he was working because he understood my research question could be better addressed by the technology developed by the leader of the lab he

Is Donald Trump, Jr. Really Fredo Corleone? By Leonard Zwelling The rise of Michael Corleone, the Ivanka Trump of his family, was hastened by the demise of Sonny Corleone on the Causeway. The latter is an event that would never have transpired had there been EasyPass in the late 1940’s. The mantle of power was

The Enormous Lift of Hicks and Hahn By Leonard Zwelling Perhaps the most frequent criticism I get as a blogger is that my prose is too vitriolic and rarely has anything nice to say about anything. Guilty. My goal from the beginning has been to shine a light on the corruption and wrong-doing I saw

Controversy At The Wall Heightened; Controversy On Holcombe Lessened By Leonard Zwelling Isabel Kershner does an excellent job outlining the latest dispute roiling Israel where politics and religion clash on a regular basis. For those of you who do not know, the Western Wall in Jerusalem is the last vestiges of the Second Temple that