A personal reflection on rural service 50 years later

A personal reflection on rural service 50 years later.

Those of us who worked in Cuba's countryside-even for a short time-still carry "rural doctor" as a badge of honor and pride. A little more than 50 years ago, in 1960, I was one of the founders of Cuba's Rural Medical Service (RMS). It was the first of several public health programs implemented under the new revolutionary government and grew out of an initiative by our class of medical graduates...

Electrocyte physiology: 50 years later.

Weakly electric gymnotiform and mormyrid fish generate and detect weak electric fields to image their worlds and communicate. These multi-purpose electric signals are generated by electrocytes, the specialized electric organ (EO) cells that produce the electric organ discharge (EOD). Just over 50 years ago the first experimental analyses of electrocyte physiology demonstrated that the EOD is pr...

Dialysis at a crossroads: 50 years later.

The ability to offer repetitive hemodialysis for treatment of chronic kidney failure has now reached its half-century anniversary. Although millions of patients have benefited from this life-extending procedure, current results in the United States have now stagnated with only small annual improvements in survival and continued high hospitalization rates. Recognition that this stagnation may be...

The War on Poverty 50 Years Later: a Progress Report

Testicular cancer: a reflection on 50 years of discovery.

Introduction The advances in the treatment of testicular cancer are among the great achievements in medicine. Cancer researchers from around the globe have asked and answered nearly every fundamental question about the treatment of patients with testicular cancer. The results are astonishing: cure in 95% of all patients; refined surgical techniques that preserve sexual function; minimization of...