Some musings on our labor's meaning and the legacy of our departing friends; on who, why, and how we should publish obituaries

For the living, the ultimate entropy is death. The human struggle, therefore, is both against death and also against all incremental steps in the journey toward the inevitable. At bottom, all vocations involve a struggle against entropy and a fight for a better life, an easier life, a longer life, and a higher quality of life. The practice of medicine is such a vocation, confronting the ultimate entropy with its devotion to saving of life, preservation of live, improvement in quality adjusted life-years, and hospice care when the inescapable arrives. It is said, with tongue in cheek, that the goal of specialty medicine is for the specialist to assure that the patient dies consequent to a disease process of someone else’s specialty. However, the specialty practice of medical physics is mostly exempt from this waggish observation. No one (at least I hope almost no one) blames the medical physicist when the grim reaper arrives. Most patients have experienced a radiation-based imaging or therapy procedure somewhere along their journey. When the time comes, our practice historically is mostly off the hook; the flip side of this is that our contribution may be overlooked and forgotten. That does not mean that the practice of the medical physics specialty is any less significant, any less essential to resisting the walk of the final mile. Proper imaging leads to proper diagnosis, which leads to proper treatment. Better definition of targets, more specific and conformal deliver of dose, better fractionation, and better biological response define proper treatment. Discovery and development of new imaging and treatment technologies, along with responsible clinical practice, define the dignity of our profession. So when one of our own passes, we experience a double tragedy. We lose a lifetime of knowledge and experience, of loyalty and humor, of equity and virtue. In addition, we lose that individual’s service in the struggle against entropy, and thousands or millions of patients have lost a friend who would stand with them. I believe this is true of every practicing medical physicist. This year, I lost two friends who were instrumental in the founding of the JACMP. Ann Wright, who first suggested that clinical physicists need a standalone journal, and Alex Turner, who chaired the ACMP the year the process to create the journal was initiated. Ann and Alex had many friends; we will miss them greatly. Now let us discuss some process and procedures. Ann’s obituary will be published in Medical Physics, and we are preparing an obituary for Alex to be published in the JACMP. So how are these decisions made? Whose obituary is published where and who qualifies? On the flip side, JOURNAL OF APPLIED CLINICAL MEDICAL PHYSICS, VOLUME 17, NUMBER 4, 2016