I’ve Rediscovered Why I Became a Doctor

I have been a doctor for over 40 years. I have cared for patients in their most critical moments, seen families face unexpected diagnoses, and made split-second decisions in intensive care where every second counted. I have witnessed both remarkable recoveries and painful losses. I have taught new doctors, published research, and worked on treatments to help people I might never meet. All this time, I thought I knew what it meant to be a physician.

When Covid began, something shifted in me. It didn’t happen all at once or because of one argument with an administrator or a policy. It was a slow realization that grew as I kept caring for sick people. For 715 days straight, I worked without a break, surrounded by very ill patients, tired nurses, worried families, and a disease we were all trying to figure out. I had never faced anything like it before, and I hope I never do again [1].

I always knew that medicine wasn’t perfect. Any doctor with enough experience knows our field is full of uncertainty, differing opinions, and treatments that don’t always work. I never stopped valuing scientific progress. I am still very grateful for antibiotics, modern surgery, intensive care, and all the discoveries that have turned deadly diseases into manageable ones.

But something deeper changed. I started to notice how medicine could lose touch with the people it’s supposed to help. I saw how hospital rules could become strict orders, how disagreeing with colleagues could be seen as disloyalty, and how patients could be reduced to numbers or risks instead of real people with their own stories and worries. What troubled me most was realizing these issues were around even before Covid. The pandemic didn’t cause them; it revealed them.

After seeing these problems clearly, I couldn’t go back to practicing medicine the way I used to. I still loved being a doctor, maybe even more than before, but I wanted to do things differently. I wanted to listen better, be more honest in my explanations, ask more questions, and help patients understand enough to take part in their own care.

The Physician I Was Before Covid

For much of my professional life, I was what most people would consider a conventional academic physician. I trained in established institutions, joined scientific societies, published extensively, and taught generations of students and residents to value evidence-based medicine. I believed in clinical trials, scientific debate, peer review, and the accumulated wisdom of physicians who had come before me. I still believe in all those things. But I’ve realized that evidence-based medicine is not the same as authority-based medicine. This difference is important because scientific evidence keeps changing, while institutions sometimes act as if their decisions never need to change.

A clinical guideline is just an interpretation of what we know at a certain time. It can be helpful, even life-saving, but it’s not set in stone. Guidelines can’t predict every patient or situation a doctor might face. They should help guide decisions, not make them for us. Before Covid, I understood these ideas in theory. During the pandemic, I realized how important they really are. I had gotten used to a system where rules, policies, insurance, and recommendations played an increasingly large role in how we made decisions. Some of these changes helped, but others just made it harder for doctors and patients to connect.

I had learned how to work within that system. I knew when to follow the rules and when to trust my own judgment. But I didn’t realize how easily that freedom could disappear, or how quickly doctors might be pressured to follow the system instead of thinking for themselves.

When the Patient Became Secondary to the Protocol

During the pandemic, I spent many hours caring for very sick patients. While the public saw news of crowded hospitals, tired healthcare workers, and scary statistics, I saw real people. I saw patients fighting for breath, families seeking comfort, and people whose health could change in just a few hours. I also saw my coworkers working under immense stress, often without enough information or time to consider their choices.

There were no simple solutions. Covid was new, and our knowledge about it changed quickly. Some treatments that looked promising at first didn’t work out in studies. Others became important as we learned more. This is how medicine should work, and it’s why open discussion matters. I wasn’t bothered by doctors disagreeing about treatments. Disagreement is part of how science moves forward. What worried me was that disagreeing was becoming less acceptable. Instead of asking whether a treatment could help a patient, more and more conversations focused on whether it was allowed, recommended, or aligned with hospital policy.

Those questions are important. Safety, rules, and evidence all matter. But they should never replace the most important question in medicine: What is best for the patient right in front of me? I don’t think every unconventional treatment works. I don’t think doctors should give out medicine just because a patient asks. And I know that even experienced doctors can make mistakes. My belief is simple but challenging: doctors must be free to think, ask questions, explain, reconsider, and make decisions based on the best evidence and each patient’s unique situation.

Patients should never be lost behind the rules. But during Covid, I often worried that this was exactly what was happening.

The Moment My Eyes Opened

People sometimes ask what changed my outlook during Covid. They may expect me to identify a single event, a particular patient, or one confrontation with an administrator. But profound changes in perspective rarely happen so neatly. For me, the transformation was cumulative, built upon hundreds of encounters and countless hours spent watching medicine operate under extraordinary pressure.

It came from watching patients suffer while medicine struggled to keep pace with a rapidly changing disease. It came from recognizing the limitations of treatments that were sometimes discussed with greater confidence than the evidence justified. It came from seeing legitimate scientific questions become entangled with politics, professional reputations, and public messaging. And it came from recognizing that some physicians were becoming more concerned about the consequences of asking questions than about the questions themselves.

I spoke publicly about what I was witnessing and defended the importance of independent clinical judgment. That decision carried professional and financial consequences, as I have discussed in an earlier Brownstone essay [1]. But the experience also forced me to ask a more personal question, one that had nothing to do with government officials, hospital administrators, or professional organizations.

Had I become so accustomed to how medicine operated that I stopped questioning whether it was always in the patient’s best interest?

That question was uncomfortable because it forced me to examine my own habits. Had I always given patients enough information to participate meaningfully in their care? Had I sometimes assumed my medical training entitled me to make decisions I should have shared? Had I relied too heavily on guidelines when a patient’s circumstances called for a more individualized conversation?

I couldn’t honestly say I had always done everything perfectly. No physician can. But I could decide what kind of physician I wanted to be moving forward. I decided that patients deserved more than prescriptions and reassurances. They deserved explanations. They deserved access to uncertainty, not merely conclusions. They deserved to understand why I recommended a particular treatment, what alternatives existed, and what might happen if they chose a different path. Above all, they deserved to be treated as intelligent participants in decisions affecting their own bodies.

Covid did not make me less of a physician. It made me question whether I had been sufficiently attentive to the responsibilities that came with being one.

I No Longer Want Patients Who Follow Orders

At one time, the ideal patient was often described as compliant. The patient took prescribed medication, followed instructions, returned for appointments, and didn’t challenge the physician’s recommendations. Physicians often viewed questions as obstacles to efficient care.

Today, I find that concept inadequate. I do not want patients who obey me without understanding me. I want patients who ask why. Why am I taking this medication? What evidence supports its use? What are the potential side effects? Is there another option? What happens if I do nothing? Could changing my lifestyle alter the course of my illness? How certain are we about this diagnosis?

These are not troublesome questions. They are the questions an engaged patient should ask, and I increasingly encourage them in my own practice.

When someone challenges my recommendation, I do not automatically interpret that challenge as a lack of trust. Sometimes it means the patient is trying to understand something frightening or unfamiliar. Sometimes it means that a previous experience has left that person uncertain about the medical system. And sometimes the patient raises a concern that deserves more consideration than I initially gave it.

That does not diminish my expertise. It requires me to use that expertise more effectively. My responsibility is not simply to tell patients what to do. It is to help them understand their condition well enough to make informed decisions.

There is an enormous difference between saying, “You need this medication,” and explaining, “Here is what we know about your condition, here is why I believe this medication may help, here are its risks, and here are the alternatives we should consider.”

The second conversation takes longer, but it respects the patient. It also lets us discover what matters most to the person receiving treatment, something we can’t always determine from lab results or clinical guidelines.

In my practice today, I want patients to leave the office understanding not only what we have decided, but why. Knowledge doesn’t eliminate fear, but it can make it manageable. It can replace helplessness with participation, and participation is often the beginning of genuine healing.

The Forgotten Art of Telling Patients the Truth

Long before Covid, I was interested in one of medicine’s most difficult responsibilities: delivering bad news. I participated in research examining how physicians communicate serious information to patients and families. Our international study, published in Healthcare in 2020, surveyed 10,106 healthcare professionals from 174 institutions across 40 countries. We found that only about one third of respondents reported receiving formal training in delivering bad news [2].

Think about what that means. We devote years to teaching physicians how to interpret electrocardiograms, recognize abnormalities on imaging studies, manage complicated medications, and perform sophisticated procedures. Yet professional training still insufficiently emphasizes one of medicine’s most emotionally consequential responsibilities: telling another human being that life may never be the same.

A physician may know precisely how to interpret a complicated scan and still struggle to tell a mother that her child has a serious illness. A doctor may understand the physiology of multiple organ failure and still be unable to sit comfortably with a family confronting the possibility of death. I have had those conversations more times than I care to remember. They never become easy, and I would worry about myself if they did.

I have learned that patients and families usually recognize when a physician is avoiding the truth. They notice evasive language, unnecessary technical explanations, and reassurances that do not match the seriousness of the situation. They also recognize compassion, sometimes in gestures that appear almost insignificant to the person providing them.

Sometimes compassion means sitting down instead of standing in the doorway. Sometimes it means putting aside the computer and making eye contact. Sometimes it means letting silence follow a diagnosis because the person across from you needs time to absorb what you just said. And sometimes it means acknowledging that we do not know what will happen.

That last admission became especially important to me during Covid. Medicine can tempt us to project certainty because we believe it provides reassurance. But false certainty can ultimately destroy trust. I would rather tell a patient, “I do not know the answer yet, but I will work with you to find it,” than offer a confident explanation unsupported by the evidence. Patients do not need physicians who pretend to know everything. They need physicians who care enough to tell the truth, even when that truth is difficult.

The Patient Who Changed My Perspective Before Covid

Another experience shaped my understanding of medicine, though it occurred years before the pandemic. In 2014, I suffered a posterior circulation stroke. For someone who had spent his professional life diagnosing and treating serious illness, becoming the patient was a profoundly different experience.

Suddenly, the familiar world of clinical decision-making looked very different from the other side of the hospital bed. I understood the terminology, knew the possible complications, and could follow the medical reasoning behind the decisions being made. But knowledge did not eliminate vulnerability. I was still a patient facing uncertainty about my future.

I spent 19 days in the hospital. During that time, I learned that even a physician with extensive critical-care experience can feel powerless when the illness is his own. I understood, perhaps more clearly than ever, that illness cannot be reduced to physiological abnormalities or radiological findings.

Illness changes the way a person sees the world. It threatens independence and creates questions that medical textbooks cannot answer. Will I recover? Will I be able to work? Will I be the same person? What will happen to my family?

Those questions were no longer theoretical. They were mine.

I was fortunate to recover, but the experience stayed with me. It reminded me that the person lying in the hospital bed is not merely the recipient of our clinical expertise. That person has a history, a family, responsibilities, fears, and dreams that exist far beyond the hospital walls.

Yet I didn’t fully integrate those lessons into my philosophy of medical practice until Covid forced me to reconsider the relationship between medical authority and patient autonomy.

My stroke taught me what it felt like to be vulnerable. Covid taught me how easily vulnerable people could lose their voice within a powerful medical system. Together, those experiences transformed the way I approach the people who come to me for help.

A Different Kind of Medical Practice

My practice today is not the same as it was before the pandemic. I still diagnose disease, prescribe medications, interpret laboratory studies, and recommend treatments. I still rely on scientific literature and decades of clinical experience, and I still believe that modern medicine has accomplished extraordinary things. But the emphasis has changed. I spend more time discussing why a treatment is appropriate and whether it is necessary at all. I am more willing to question whether a medication prescribed years earlier still serves a useful purpose. I pay closer attention to the cumulative burden of multiple medications, especially in older patients who may be seeing several specialists.

I want to understand what patients eat, how they sleep, whether they exercise, what stresses they face, and what they believe is happening to their health. I want to know what they fear and what they hope to accomplish. For one patient, success may mean living long enough to attend a grandchild’s graduation. For another, it may mean controlling pain without losing mental clarity. For someone else, it may mean reducing dependence on medications or simply being able to walk without becoming breathless.

These goals matter, and they should influence how we practice medicine. I have also become more conscious of the difference between treating a laboratory result and treating a human being. An abnormal value deserves investigation, but not every abnormality requires immediate pharmacological intervention. A risk factor deserves attention, but risk reduction must be balanced against adverse effects, treatment burden, and patient preferences.

Preventive medicine should be more than identifying opportunities to prescribe medications. It should help people understand the daily choices that influence their health over time. Nutrition, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress, social connection, and avoiding harmful habits deserve serious attention alongside pharmacological and procedural interventions. None of this means that lifestyle measures can replace necessary medical treatment. They cannot. But we also shouldn’t underestimate the value of helping patients understand what they can do for themselves.

I want patients to recognize that doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical manufacturers don’t exclusively manage their health. They play an essential role, and my job is to give them the knowledge and support to exercise that role responsibly.

Questioning Medicine Is Not Rejecting Science

One unfortunate consequence of the pandemic was the tendency to divide physicians into opposing camps. A doctor who questioned a particular policy or recommendation could be portrayed as rejecting science altogether. Conversely, some critics of pandemic policy began treating nearly every established medical intervention with suspicion. Neither approach is intellectually satisfactory.

Science is not a political identity. It is a method of inquiry that requires observations, hypotheses, experiments, criticism, replication, and a willingness to revise conclusions when better evidence becomes available. The ability to change one’s mind is not a weakness in science. It is one of its defining strengths.

I have spent much of my career conducting research and publishing in medical journals. I know how demanding good scientific work can be. I also know that publication does not automatically make a conclusion correct, just as professional disagreement does not automatically make a physician wrong. Studies have limitations. Clinical trials may exclude patients commonly encountered in practice. Confounding can distort observational findings. Even carefully designed investigations may produce results that require further confirmation. This is not an argument against evidence-based medicine. It is an argument for practicing it properly.

A physician should distinguish between established knowledge, emerging evidence, plausible hypotheses, and unsupported claims. Patients deserve to know those distinctions. If a treatment has strong evidence of benefit, I should explain that evidence. If the benefit is modest or uncertain, I should say so. If a treatment is experimental, the patient should understand its investigational nature, potential risks, and the limits of what we know. If the evidence shows that something I previously believed was incorrect, I should have the integrity to change my recommendation.

In another Brownstone essay, “The Courage to Remain Uncertain,” I reflected on the importance of curiosity and intellectual humility [3]. That principle has become central to my practice because certainty is not always a sign of knowledge. Sometimes it is simply an unwillingness to admit how much remains unknown.

The Danger of Medicine without Humility

When I wrote “The Treatment Was Worse Than the Disease,” I reflected on George Washington’s death and the medical practices of his era [4]. Washington’s physicians believed they were helping him. They used treatments accepted by respected practitioners of their time, and their intentions were not malicious. Yet the treatments themselves may have contributed to his death. The lesson is not that modern medicine equals 18th-century medicine. Professional confidence does not guarantee correctness. The history of medicine contains countless examples of practices once regarded as reasonable that were later abandoned or substantially revised. Our generation will not be exempt from that history.

Some treatments we currently use will survive scrutiny. Others will be modified, restricted, or discarded as better evidence emerges. That is not a reason to abandon medicine. It is a reason to practice with humility. I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the physician who cannot admit uncertainty, the institution that cannot acknowledge error, or the professional organization that treats criticism as a threat to its authority.

Humility does not mean indecision. In critical care, I have often had to act immediately with incomplete information. Waiting for absolute certainty can be as dangerous as acting prematurely. But there is a difference between making the best decision possible under difficult circumstances and pretending that the decision is beyond question. The first is clinical judgment. The second is arrogance, and Covid reminded me how dangerous it can become when institutional power reinforces it.

The Physician Must Return to the Bedside

In another Brownstone essay, “Medicine Has Forgotten How to Touch the Patient,” I explored something that has concerned me for years: the gradual disappearance of physical presence from medical care [5]. Modern medicine has become extraordinarily sophisticated. Imaging technologies reveal anatomical details once impossible to visualize, laboratory tests detect minute biochemical changes, and computer systems process enormous amounts of clinical information. These technologies can be invaluable, and I would never suggest returning to a world without them.

But somewhere along the way, we began confusing information accumulation with the practice of caring.

A physician can review dozens of lab results without ever asking a patient how they feel. A doctor can document an extensive electronic medical record while barely looking at the person sitting across the desk. A hospital team can discuss a patient in great detail during rounds without giving that patient a meaningful opportunity to speak.

During Covid, physical separation became an unavoidable feature of many healthcare encounters. Infection control precautions, visitor restrictions, and isolation procedures altered the relationship between patients, families, and clinicians. Some measures aimed to reduce transmission during a dangerous period, yet we should not forget their human consequences. Patients experienced serious illness without the reassuring presence of loved ones. Families sometimes received life-changing information over the phone or through electronic screens. Healthcare workers struggled to provide emotional comfort through layers of protective equipment.

I do not want medicine to become comfortable with that distance. A physical examination is more than a diagnostic exercise. Sitting beside a patient, listening carefully, and placing a reassuring hand on an arm can communicate something no laboratory test can measure. It tells the patient that someone is present, paying attention, and taking responsibility.

I have seen the importance of that message in emergency departments, intensive care units, and ordinary office visits. When patients are frightened, they do not always remember the details of a medical explanation. They often remember whether the physician seemed to care.

I want to be remembered as the doctor who listened, explained, stayed present, and treated patients with dignity even when medicine had little more to offer.

Why I Now Encourage Second Opinions

Years ago, some physicians saw a patient’s request for a second opinion as distrust. I see it differently. When a patient is facing a major operation, a cancer diagnosis, a prolonged course of medication, or a decision with potentially irreversible consequences, seeking another informed perspective may be entirely reasonable.

I encourage it when appropriate because a second opinion may confirm my recommendation, identify an alternative I had not considered, or reveal information that changes the diagnosis or treatment plan. Whatever the outcome, the patient benefits from greater understanding.

I do not own my patients. They are not obligated to agree with me simply because I have spent decades practicing medicine or have published hundreds of scientific papers. My experience gives me knowledge and responsibility. It does not give me ownership over another person’s decisions. That distinction has become central to my practice.

I want patients to read, investigate, ask questions, and return with information they have found elsewhere. Of course, not everything they find will be reliable. The internet contains extraordinary educational resources alongside misleading claims, commercial promotions, and outright falsehoods. But dismissing a patient’s questions because they originated online is not an effective response. It is an abdication of our responsibility to educate.

When patients bring me an article or ask about an unfamiliar treatment, I would rather examine the evidence with them than ridicule their curiosity. Sometimes I explain why the claims are unsupported. Sometimes I discover that a legitimate question deserves further investigation. In either case, the conversation strengthens the relationship. Patients should leave a medical encounter feeling more informed, not more intimidated.

What Covid Taught Me about Medical Freedom

The phrase medical freedom has acquired political associations that sometimes obscure its meaning. To me, medical freedom is inseparable from medical responsibility. It does not mean that every treatment a patient requests should be provided, nor does it mean that a physician may disregard safety standards, informed consent, or scientific evidence.

It means that medical decisions should emerge from an honest relationship between a knowledgeable physician and an informed patient, within appropriate ethical and legal boundaries. It means patients should understand the potential benefits and harms of proposed interventions. It means physicians should be able to discuss legitimate scientific uncertainties without fear that asking questions will automatically be interpreted as professional misconduct. It also means institutional convenience should never be mistaken for individualized medical care.

Tensions will always exist between individual preferences and broader responsibilities, particularly during infectious disease emergencies. Those tensions are real and deserve thoughtful consideration. But emergencies do not eliminate the obligation to communicate honestly, nor do they make every institutional decision immune to scrutiny. The more authority exercised over patients and physicians, the greater the need for transparency, accountability, and humility.

The pandemic showed how quickly fear can change how people think about medical decisions. Fear may make patients desperate for certainty. It may make institutions reluctant to acknowledge uncertainty. It may encourage officials to present complex scientific questions as if they have only one acceptable answer.

I understand those pressures, but I also believe physicians have a duty to resist the temptation to offer certainty where it does not exist. The public deserves better than slogans. Patients deserve explanations, and physicians should be willing to provide them.

The Doctor I Want to Be for the Rest of My Career

At this stage of my life, I have little interest in accumulating more titles simply for recognition. I have been fortunate to have a long, varied medical career. I have worked in academic medicine, intensive care, emergency medicine, and private practice. I have had the privilege of teaching physicians and caring for patients from many different backgrounds. But when I think about what I want the remainder of my professional life to mean, I do not think primarily about publications, awards, or positions.

I think about the people who enter my office. I think about the older patient carrying a bag filled with medications who cannot explain why each was prescribed. I think about the person told that an abnormal test means something terrible but who has never received a clear explanation. I think about the patient who has visited several physicians and still feels that nobody has listened. And I think about the family sitting in an intensive care unit waiting room, hoping someone will take the time to explain what is happening to the person they love. Those are the people I want to serve.

I want my patients to feel comfortable telling me when they disagree. I want them to ask questions I cannot immediately answer. I want them to understand that I will never deliberately conceal uncertainty merely to appear more authoritative. I want them to know that when I recommend a medication, a procedure, or even no treatment at all, the recommendation reflects my sincere assessment of their individual circumstances.

And when I make a mistake, I want to have the courage to acknowledge it. That is the physician I aspire to be, not because Covid taught me that everything I had learned was wrong, but because it reminded me that medical knowledge without compassion, humility, and independent judgment is incomplete.

Medicine Must Belong to the Patient Again

People tend to talk about healthcare reform almost exclusively in terms of financing, insurance coverage, hospital consolidation, pharmaceutical prices, and government regulation. These issues matter enormously, but I believe we need deeper reform. We must reconsider what the relationship between a physician and a patient should be. Is the patient primarily a consumer of medical services, moving through a system designed to maximize efficiency and document compliance? Is the physician primarily a technician, expected to implement recommendations developed by committees and institutions? Or is medicine still a profession built on trust, judgment, compassion, and a moral obligation to put the individual patient’s welfare at the center of care?

I know which answer I believe in. I do not want to return to an era of paternalistic medicine in which physicians made decisions without meaningful patient participation. Nor do I want a future where algorithms, administrative policies, or commercial incentives dictate medical decisions without sufficient attention to the individual.

I want something better. I want medicine in which physicians bring their knowledge and experience to the conversation, patients bring their values and goals, and both work together to reach the best possible decision. I want young doctors to learn that listening is a clinical skill, not a courtesy. I want medical students to understand that delivering bad news with compassion is as important as knowing the correct diagnosis.

I want physicians to recognize that saying “I don’t know” can start an honest, productive conversation. And I want patients to understand that asking questions is not an act of rebellion. It is an essential part of responsible participation in their own healthcare.

Covid changed my practice because it changed the questions I ask myself.

I no longer ask only whether I have selected the correct treatment. I ask whether the patient understands why I selected it. I ask whether we have considered reasonable alternatives. I ask whether the benefits justify the burdens. I ask whether the patient’s own priorities have influenced our decision. And I ask whether I have given that person the attention and respect I would want for someone I love.These questions have made me a different physician, and I hope they have made me a better one.

What I Hope My Patients Remember

One day, like every physician, I will see my last patient. I don’t know when that day will come, and I hope it stays far in the future because I still love practicing medicine, despite everything I have witnessed and criticized. When that day arrives, I doubt anyone will remember how many papers I published or the professional titles that followed my name.

I hope some patients will remember that I took their concerns seriously. I hope families will remember that I was willing to sit with them during the worst moments of their lives. I hope those who disagreed with me will remember that I listened. And I hope that at least a few people will say that after visiting my office, they understood their health better and felt more capable of making decisions about their future. That would be a legacy worth having.

I have not lost faith in medicine. I have lost faith in the notion that medicine should be practiced without questioning authority, acknowledging uncertainty, or respecting the patient’s intelligence. I still believe deeply in scientific discovery. I still admire the extraordinary dedication of physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who devote their lives to helping others. But I believe the profession must recover something that clinical performance indicators and electronic medical records cannot measure or capture. It must recover its humanity.

Covid opened my eyes not because it gave me all the answers, but because it forced me to ask questions I should have asked more often throughout my career.

I cannot undo every mistake I may have made. I cannot change every institutional policy or correct every failure of modern healthcare. But I can change the way I practice.

I can listen more carefully, explain more honestly, question more thoughtfully, and empower patients rather than instruct them. I can remember, every time someone sits across from me seeking help, that the most important person in the room is not the physician. It is the patient. I did not abandon medicine during Covid. I rediscovered the reason I became a doctor in the first place.

References

1. Varon J. What Covid Policy Did to Doctors Who Refused to Stay Silent. Brownstone Institute [Internet]. 2026 Mar 14. 
2. Alshami A, Douedi S, Avila Ariyoshi A, Alazzawi M, Patel S, Einav S, et al. Breaking bad news, a pertinent yet still an overlooked skill: an international survey study. Healthcare (Basel). 2020;8(4):501. doi:10.3390/healthcare8040501.
3. Varon J. The Courage to Remain Uncertain. Brownstone Institute [Internet]. 2026 Jun 18.  
4. Varon J. The Treatment Was Worse Than the Disease. Brownstone Institute [Internet]. 2026 Sep 27. 
5. Varon J. Medicine Has Forgotten How to Touch the Patient. Brownstone Institute [Internet]. 2026 Sep 13.