East versus West

“Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young” – JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I like to keep in contact with young doctors; it keeps the mind agile, and less prone to the ossification that afflicts the worldly and experienced. Today, I heard from a junior colleague involved in the Internal Medicine Basic Specialty Training that the Specialist Training Committee had decided to link the Singapore training system to the American College of Physicians annual exams which all US residents in the Internal Medicine sit.

Feet of clay

As a medical oncologist, one rapidly becomes accustomed to the seemingly endless spin generated around new drugs. These drugs are hailed as ‘breakthroughs’, ‘potential cures’ and more. The buzzword in the last ten years has been ‘targeted therapy’, where new monoclonal antibodies and small molecule inhibitors are breathlessly rolled out at each year’s ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) meeting.