June 2019

Broadway 2019: My New York Fix By Leonard Zwelling I’m a Houstonian now. I have spent as many years in Houston as I had in New York, Connecticut, Washington, D.C. and Durham, NC combined. But, scratch the surface just a hair and I’m still a New Yorker and I can’t get enough. Actually, that’s not […]

Delays By Leonard Zwelling The most common faculty complaint I heard as a vice president was, “you didn’t ask me; you didn’t tell me.” I think this is fair. In a country that used to be a democracy, most people still want a say in what happens to them and the relevant information when things

Term Limits: For Politicians, Chairmen, and Professors By Leonard Zwelling On May 28 I was listening to Chuck Todd on Meet The Press Daily on MSNBC. Yes, I was listening only as I was in the car and had access to MSNBC on Sirius/XM radio. Chuck and his guests, George Will and Charlie Sykes, both

Why The Chinese Faculty Firing (And Not Firing) Issue Is So Important By Leonard Zwelling It has been one of the most interesting episodes in my 35 years of watching (and participating in) interesting episodes at MD Anderson. I cannot remember any instances of group firings other than the Jewish group of a few years

In Praise Of Older Doctors: A Grateful Patient By Leonard Zwelling Don’t let anyone kid you. No matter what you are able to do at 70, you are officially an older American. You’ve been on Medicare for five years. You’ve been getting cheaper movie tickets for eight to ten. You’re not sixteen any more and

Bad Week: A Coincidence Or Cause And Effect? By Leonard Zwelling So two stories come out in the same week and it surely is not a good week for MD Anderson’s leadership. In the first, the federal government in the form of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services came down on the clinical labs

Wondrous Elasticity: The Bottomless Pit That Is Doctors’ Good Will And How Administrators Are Exploiting It By Leonard Zwelling When two doctors who I respect immensely both refer me to the same op-ed piece in The New York Times, you know it has got to be important. This happened over the weekend of June 10

Joe Biden’s Game of Hyde And Seek By Leonard Zwelling The most important reason not to lie is so that you don’t have to remember what you said. Just tell the truth and you’ll be fine. That’s hard over a 40-year career as a U.S. Senator and Vice President as Joe Biden is beginning to

Making Surgeons By Leonard Zwelling I learned early on in medical school that I was not going to be a surgeon. Now I know why. The article above points out how surgeons are really made through rote practice of manual dexterity early in their lives followed by intense and prolonged training in the art of

The Case Of The Fifth Chinese Faculty Member: Only A Flesh Wound By Leonard Zwelling https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/MD-Anderson-finds-fifth-NIH-rule-violation-case-13905340.php Apparently, whatever the three MD Anderson Chinese scientists who were fired or quit did, the fifth one investigated did not do that. It would be nice to know what the three did and the fifth didn’t (and where’s the