How are we in our own Reckoning!

How we perceive our own retina

Ever since the days of René Descartes, in the seventeenth century, the search for the relationship between subjective perception and neural activity has been an ongoing challenge. In neuroscience, an approach to the problem via the visual system has produced a paradigm using perceptual suppression, changing with time. Cortical areas in which the neural activity was modulated in temporal correla...

Ageism: we are our own worst enemy.

In 1969, Butler (1969) first coined the term "ageism" to confront "prejudice by one age group toward other age groups" (pp. 243). As with other "isms," such as racism and sexism, ageism leads to bigotry and discrimination, though it is a very distinct beast in that, for the most part, other "isms" refer to those different from ourselves: distinct, mutually exclusive, and impervious groups. Conv...

Do we own our bodies?

We are the ones who impede our own progress.

To the Editor: Recently, an updated Practice Advisory has been published regarding perioperative visual loss associated with spine surgery. I feel the need to highlight certain statements in the Advisory that are contradictory to the long-standing effort in the anesthesiology/critical care communities to place fluid management on a more rational basis. Starting decades ago, significant effort h...

Infective endocarditis: how well are we managing our patients?

Infective endocarditis remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the U.S., with an estimated number of 10–15,000 new cases being diagnosed each year (1). Although the number of cases of infective endocarditis occurring as a result of rheumatic disease is diminishing, this reduction in cases has been replaced by an increased incidence of endocarditis among intravenous drug users and ol...