Before she could address the need for physicians to negotiate successfully the inevitable challenges of conflict of interest, Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief emerita of the Journal of the American Medical Association, had to deal with a cultural difficulty.
Why do some mutations lead to disease while others seemingly overcome injury without harm? How do some cells pinch hit for their missing or hurt comrades?
Writing in his diary on Sept. 27, 1918, Charles Corning, former mayor of Concord, N.H., described how flu was blazing through his corner of the world “as fire shrivels the fields, laying out communities and taking a toll of death unprecedented.”
