Author's posts
A gut punch against COVID-19?
“You are what you eat.” Jean Anthelme Brillant-Savarin, a French lawyer, epicurean, and father of the low carbohydrate diet, penned these words in the 18th century. As we struggle through the COVID-19 pandemic, we search for personal ways to influence …
My professional life battling an RNA virus
I feel like I am reliving a bad dream. The race to find a treatment and/or cure to SARS-CoV-2 is reminiscent of decades of practicing gastroenterology while hepatitis C roamed the hospital wards as a death sentence for many. I found myself recently rec…
Preventing COVID-19 transmission and the art and science of barriers
“Good fences make good neighbors” is a memorable and salient line from Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Walls.” While the context of its meaning is a plea for the importance of privacy, it is a useful phrase for the COVID-19 …
COVID-19: What can we learn from history?
I was quite young, but I could sense the unease in my mother when she first sent me off to elementary school amidst an uncertain risk of paralytic polio in the 1950’s era. She maintained her frightened countenance until 1960 when the Sabin vaccine mira…
COVID-19: What can we learn from history?
I was quite young, but I could sense the unease in my mother when she first sent me off to elementary school amidst an uncertain risk of paralytic polio in the 1950’s era. She maintained her frightened countenance until 1960 when the Sabin vaccine mira…
Coronavirus: the human factor in intensive care
The summer of 1979 is permanently etched into my memory. I walked into the intensive care unit as a newly minted intern. I walked over to ICU-Bed 1 to be introduced to my first patient, a frail teenaged boy who was tethered to a ventilator. “He is day …
