These are the Stories Doctors Tell

We are the stories we tell.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

THINK BACK TO that tragic scene near the end of James Cameron’s Titanic when, after the ship has sunk, Rose clings to some fl otsam. Her lover, Jack, tries to hang on, only to slip away as hypothermia overcomes him. From a cinematic perspective, Cameron’s storytelling skills were particularly powerful: you could almost feel the frigid water enfold you, and you could easily project yourself into...

Why doctors' stories matter.

For me, the invitation to participate in honouring doctors’ stories* completes a circle that has been going around for 20 years. In 1989 I wrote what became my first book, At the Will of the Body,1 which tells the story of my own illness experiences during the mid1980s. I had a virally induced heart attack—which I was disappointed to hear has now been downgraded to a “cardiac incident”—and just...

Cédric Blanpain: The stories stem cells tell

A lthough the stem cells found in adult tissues produce a more limited range of cell types than those found in the early embryo, they are absolutely essential to replace cells lost to turnover or tissue damage. Understanding and harnessing the biology of these cells would yield amazing therapeutic benefi ts. But to realize such benefi ts, it's necessary to study as many kinds of stem cells as p...

Liz Rhoades: Single molecules tell many stories

R ecent advances in lasers and fl uo-rescent dyes have made it possible to observe individual proteins as they fold into their mature conforma-tion or bind to other proteins. Liz Rhoades is harnessing these techniques to answer questions about the biology of amyloid family proteins—whose aggregation is associated with neurodegenerative syndromes such as Parkinson's and Alzheim-er's disease (1)....