Matters of Choice Quotes

“distinguished but run-down house on Brattle Street in Cambridge. R.J. had viewed it with disinterest. It”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“God is in each of us. But we must give Him permission to come out.”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“she learned about Archimedes’ claim that, given a long enough lever, he could move the planet.”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“The simplest and most cost-effective plan was the “single-payer” system used by other leading nations, in which the government collected taxes and paid for the health care of all its citizens.”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“There are thirty-seven million people in the United States without any form of medical insurance. Every other leading industrial nation in the world—Germany, Italy, France, Japan, England, Canada, and all the others—supplies health care to all its citizens, at a fraction of what the world’s richest country spends for inadequate health care. It’s our national shame.”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“individuals who were more or less happy with themselves, secure in their own souls, usually opened themselves to new friendships. It was those whose ancestry and native status were their only hopes for distinction who tended to be critical and cold toward “new people.”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“Just on the brink of danger, not before, God and the Doctor we alike adore; The danger passed, both are alike requited; God forgot and the Doctor slighted.”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“The answer isn’t to eliminate malpractice suits. The answer is to eliminate habitual malpractice, to teach the public to do away with frivolous claims and awards, and to teach doctors how to protect themselves during those times when they make the mistakes that happen to every human being.”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“most of the students were aware of their place in time and society, sensitive to the fact that an exploding technology hadn’t obliterated the human ability to make mistakes. It was important for them to be acutely aware of situations that could cause harm or death to their patients and waste their hard-earned incomes on malpractice settlements.”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“I have never had a money practice; it would have been impossible for me. But the actual calling on people, at all times and under all conditions, the coming to grips with the intimate conditions of their lives, when they were being born, when they were dying, watching them die, watching them get well when they were ill, has always absorbed me. —William Carlos Williams, M.D. Autobiography”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“The difficulty in life is the choice. —George Moore The Bending of the Bough”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“Teniendo en cuenta que la probabilidad de morir cada vez que se sube a un automóvil es de uno entre seis mil, tanto el embarazo como el aborto puede considerarse muy seguros.”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“Justo en el momento del peligro, pero no antes, a Dios y al médico lo adoramos por igual; una vez pasado el peligro, por igual se lo pagamos: Dios olvidado, y el médico desdeñado.”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice

“The close-up, reassuring, warm touch of the physician, the comfort and concern, the long, leisurely discussions … are disappearing from the practice of medicine, and this may turn out to be too great a loss. … If I were a medical student or an intern, just getting ready to begin, I would be more worried about this aspect of my future than anything else. I would be apprehensive that my real job, caring for sick people, might soon be taken away, leaving me with the quite different occupation of looking after machines. I would be trying to figure out ways to keep this from happening. —Lewis Thomas, M.D. The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher”
― Noah Gordon, Matters of Choice