Learning While Caring: Reflections on a Half-Century of Cancer Practice, Research, Education, and Ethics

by Samuel Hellman

Overview

In the last half century, a revolution in biology and medicine has taken place, bringing about emerging practical, philosophical, and societal issues with which academia in general, and medicine and oncology in particular, must grapple. One witness to this revolution is Samuel B. Hellman, a radiation oncologist who has served as Dean of the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago; Physician-in-Chief at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Chair of Radiation Therapy at Harvard Medical School; President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology; President of the American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology; and co-editor with Dr. Vincent DeVita of seven editions of Cancer: Principles and Practice of Oncology, the premier oncology text in the world. Learning While Caring offers a collection of Dr. Hellman's essays and articles, in which he delves into the issues brought about by advances and changes in medicine over the last fifty years. The essays are organized into five sections: Medical Ethics and Learning; Academic Medicine; Research; Perceptions of Cancer; and Heroes. Each section is introduced by a new commentary from Dr. Hellman on the historical aspects and current significance of the issues presented in that section's essays. Throughout, Dr. Hellman interweaves reflections on major aspects of his professional career and the times in which they occurred as examples of the challenges and controversies that confront oncology, medicine, and academia. The book concludes with "Summing Up," reviewing changes in medical practice and biological science and concluding that, despite these huge changes, certain things remain the same, especially the primary obligation of the doctor to the patient and the need to seek and test new knowledge. Dr. Hellman writes, "We are currently at the end of the beginning of the revolution in biology and medicine resulting from the understanding of how genetic information was passed generationally. Our capacities are far greater now but the essence of medical practice and our responsibility to the patient remains the same."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190657000
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/10/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Most recently, Dr. Hellman served as Dean of the Division of Biological Sciences and the Pritzker School of Medicine and Vice President for the Medical Center at The University of Chicago. Preceding that he was Physician-in-Chief of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases and held the Benno C. Schmidt Chair in Clinical Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Before that Dr. Hellman served as Chairman of the Department of Radiation Therapy at the Harvard Medical School where he was the Alvin T. and Viola D. Fuller - American Cancer Society Professor. He was also the founding Director of the Joint Center for Radiation Therapy at the Harvard Medical School.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Preface Introduction Commentary 1. Aims of Education; annual address given to University of Chicago freshman class of the college.; published in: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1990 2. A Doctor's Dilemmas; Commencement Address, Allegheny College 1984 3. The End of Inevitability or Frankenstein and the Biological Revolution; published in: Pharos 1994 Chapter 1. Medical Ethics and Learning Commentary 1. Randomized Clinical Trials and the Doctor-Patient Relationship; published in: Cancer Clinical Trials 1979 2. Of Mice but not Men; published in: New England Journal of Medicine 1991 3. Ethics of Randomized Clinical Trials. From a series of Ethics Grand Rounds, Dana Farber Cancer Institute ed. By E. J. Emanuel and W. Bradford Patterson; published in: Journal of Clinical Oncology 1998 4.The Patient and the Public Good; published in: Nature Medicine 1995 5.On First Looking into Kutcher's Contested Medicine; an Essay Review; published in: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 2010 6.Managed Care and the Doctor-Patient Relationship: A Menage a Trois; unpublished essay 1997 7.Fin de Siecle Medicine: Avoiding the Unintended Consequences of Health Care Reform; published in: The Brookings Review 1994 8.Premise, Promise, Paradigm and Prophesy; published in: Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology 2005 9.Learning While Caring: Medicine's Epistemology; published in: Journal of Clinical Oncology 2014 2. Academic Medicine Commentary 1. Commencement Address, Medicine: A University Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago, 1999 2. Commentary on University of Chicago President Don Randal presentation at University of Chicago Symposium " University of The Future" 2001 3.The Intellectual Quarantine of American Medicine; published in: Academic Medicine 1991 4. Tales of the Unnatural: Return From the Dean(d); published in: Journal of the American Medical Association 1998 5. A Lamentation on the Death of Collaboration: unpublished essay 2002 6. Irwin Freedberg and the Changing Times of Academic Medicine: from "Remembering Irwin Freedberg" published in: Journal of Investigative Dermatology 2006 7. Ivar, Michael and Zvi: Celebrating the Diversity of our Friends and Colleagues; published in: Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology 2005 3. Research Commentary 1. Reflections of a Radiation Oncologist as President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology; published in: Journal of Clinical Oncology 1987 2. Keynote Address: Nobel Symposium 2000. Technology, Biology and Traffic; published in: Acta Oncologica 2001 3. Karnovsky Memorial Lecture. Natural History of Small Breast Cancers; published in: Journal of Clinical Oncology 1994 4. Dogma and Inquisition in Medicine: Breast Cancer as a Case Study; published in: Cancer 1993 5. Darwin's Clinical Relevance; published in: Cancer 1997 6. Oligometastases: published in: Journal of Clinical Oncology 1995 7. Oligometastases Revisited; published in: Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology 2011 4. Perceptions of Cancer Commentary 1. Evolving Paradigms and Perceptions of Cancer; published in: Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology 2005 2. Oncologists and Their Patients: unpublished essay 2016 5. Heroes Commentary 1. Thomas Hodgkin and Hodgkin's Disease: Two Paradigms Appropriate to Medicine Today; published in: Journal of the American Medical Society 1991 2. Curies, Cure and Culture; published in: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 1992 3. The First Century of Cancer Chemotherapy; published in: Journal of Clinical Oncology 1998 Summing Up