My goal was to develop into an independent research scientist studying clinical problems at the laboratory bench, but I felt that postgraduate residency training in internal medicine was necessary.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I studied in a medical college and qualified myself as a medical graduate.
I do not practice clinical medicine and hence do not treat individual patients. My career is in medical science.
The dilemma of modern medicine, and the underlying central flaw in medical education and, most of all, in the training of interns, is the irresistible drive to do something, anything. It is expected by patients and too often agreed to by their doctors, in the face of ignorance.
After briefly considering whether to study biology or medicine, I opted for medicine and initiated my studies at the University of Bonn. The first two years were particularly hard, since I simultaneously decided to attend lectures and courses in biology as well.
While in medical school, I was drafted into the U.S. Army with the other medical students as part of the wartime training program, and naturalized American citizen in 1943. I greatly enjoyed my medical studies, which at the Medical College of Virginia were very clinically oriented.
Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness.
Medical professionals are as skilled and as dedicated as any, but they operate within a fragmented system that has not progressed as far as we have in aviation.
It was clear to me from the start that I would need to combine both a medical degree with a research qualification, to keep at the cutting edge of medical science and technology.
Although I completed two years of internship in various small hospitals, I decided against continuing my medical training. I was much more fascinated by the unsolved problems of medicine than by practicing it.
I trained in medicine after pursuing an academic career in the humanities, mainly because of my interest in the relationship between mind and body, and between mind and brain.