Inside Dartmouth Medicine

A Mere Mortal Dr. Steven Schlozman wasn't terribly surprised when an insurance company rejected his request to prescribe a new treatment for a patient. And, as usual, he expected to spend personal time sitting on hold waiting to appeal the decision. But what startled him was the conversation that took place when he finally got through to a live human being. In this podcast, Schlozm

Dartmouth undergrad examines opioid death toll Conducting the first comprehensive analysis of prescription opioid-related deaths in New Hampshire presented some special challenges for Laura Hester, a geography major in the Dartmouth College Class of 2009. It involved driving an hour each way from Hanover, N.H., to the Chief Medical Examiner's Office in Concord almost every other da

Talking about health-care reform Everyone—from the Obama administration to your friends and neighbors—is talking about health-care reform. So in the Summer 2009 issue of Dartmouth Medicine magazine, alumni of Dartmouth Medical School from across the country answered questions about their practices and the changes they'd like to see made to the nation's health-care system. To fi

Surviving cancer P.J. Hamel, a senior editor at King Arthur Flour Company, headquartered in Norwich, Vt., describes herself professionally as a "baker and blogger." She writes the King Arthur catalog, creates recipes, has written cookbooks, and blogs about baking on the company's website. And personally Hamel is, among many other roles, a cancer survivor--she was diagnosed with bre

A Patron of Positivity The summer after her first year of medical school, Dr. Julia Nordgren worked with Dr. Judy Frank, conducting research and shadowing Frank on rounds in the neonatal intensive care unit. What she learned from Frank changed her outlook on both medicine and life. "Judy Frank was clearly no ordinary woman in medicine," Nordgren says. In this podcast, originally pu

Lee Witters discusses the discovery of insulin One early prescription for diabetes involved drinking a pint and a half of milk for breakfast, eating rancid meat for dinner, and using hog's lard as skin lotion. Actually, explains Dr. Lee Witters, this treatment did some good simply by causing patients to eat less (no one likes rancid meat, after all). The discovery of insulin, which

An interview with Dr. James Bernat, a history of DHMC's ethics committee, and more information on advance directives Dr. James Bernat, an internationally recognized medical ethicist, is a professor of neurology at Dartmouth Medical School and head of the Ethics Committee at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. In 1997, and again in 2006, Bernat was one of several scholars invited to

Discovering New Darwins Charles Darwin was lucky. Without the financial support of his family, all of his powers of observation and analysis might have gone for naught. Today, of course, most scientists do not depend on their families to fund their research. Instead, the U.S. federal government began investing heavily in science in the mid-20th century. As a result, says Dr. Ethan

Getting, and getting used to, a cochlear implant Geneva Durgin was 13 months old when she heard sound for the first time through a cochlear implant. Before the implant, she couldn't hear anything, even with hearing aids. Although Geneva spent the first year of her life in silence, she thrived developmentally, thanks in large part to sign language instruction and early intervention

José Conejo-Garcia talks about his discovery of PILAR The immune system protects us from a host of pathogens, but in some cases it's actually the cause of health problems. T cells, a type of white blood cell that is a key player in the immune system, become activated when they encounter antigens. Usually, those antigens are signs that a pathogen is trying to get a foothold in the