February 1, 2019

Posted by dabloom

DAB What’s New Feb 1, 2019

matula_logo_final-2019-1-21

Sands of time, transition, & short thoughts on rules
3996 words

nesbit_calendarexample_feb

One.

time

February, the shortest month, begins today, this Friday, and its periodic extra day comes next year on a Saturday. Although 2019 is only a month old, the sands of time slipped away for one iteration of Michigan Urology, and the metaphorical hourglass reloads today for our Michigan Urology version 8 that will refresh our department. Regental privilege requires that the next urology chair requires formal action, although most of us know the party in question, who begins today as acting chair. Ganesh Palapattu will do an excellent job leading the faculty, residents, and staff – the parties who will actually do the refreshing. Our new chair will face challenges and, if history is any guide, our team will support him fully for the next chapter of the Michigan Urology journey. In that context, this is a good time to examine the past and re-articulate our history, as Richard Feynman (1918-1988), American theoretical physicist, once wrote:

“Why repeat all this? Because there are new generations born every day. Because there are great ideas developed in the history of man, and these ideas do not last unless they are passed purposefully and clearly from generation to generation.” [Feynman RP. The Meaning of it All. Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist. 1998.]

It may be a long stretch from the “great ideas in the history of man,” to a modest history of Michigan Urology but I hope you allow Matula Thoughts some slack and accept this belief in regularly rearticulating the past for each cohort of our successors.

screenshot 2019-01-29 14.12.14

I first met Ganesh when I was visiting professor at UCLA, my urology alma mater, and he was a resident under Jean deKernion, a wonderful urologist, leader, and friend. As a visiting professor at a number of places, I often tossed out ideas for papers, but Ganesh was perhaps the only one over the years who took the bait and completed a paper with me. His career took him to Johns Hopkins, The University of Rochester, and then Baylor in Houston at Tim Boone’s program. At great loss to Tim, but with his consent and blessing, Ganesh and his lab, with Alex Zaslavsky, came to Michigan at the start of my term as chair. Ganesh is well prepared. He is a terrific teacher, effective leader, excellent surgeon, and has led our largest urology section, uro-oncology, very well. When a need is identified he steps up – he was among the first to volunteer in Flint at the Hamilton Community Health Network clinic, when that opportunity materialized. His lab has done well with a recent 2% score on its latest grant submission. Ganesh will be thoughtful, consensus-building, and creative as he leads Michigan Urology in its mission (education, research, and clinical care), and our essential deliverable – kind and excellent patient-centered care. [Above: Ganesh with Anu. Below: with Kirtan and Elina.]

Two.

250px-the_melody_haunts_my_reverie

Anticipating the centennial of Michigan Urology, we’ve been working on a new volume of our story, previously written by the late John Konnak and urological scholar Dev Pardanani nearly 20 years ago. It is impossible to understand the urology story in Ann Arbor, without a larger sense of the story of our state, our specialty, and our university. It might be said that melodies of the past haunt the reveries of our stories, to tweak Hoagy Carmichael’s phrase. So, our story properly began around 11,000 years ago, well before Hippocrates and the known roots of medical practice, with the inhabitants of the Mound Builder and Woodland cultures who populated our geographical area after the last glacial period receded. The Holcombe beach site near Lake Saint Clair has evidence of Paleo-Indian settlement in that era and by the 17th century, Huron, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Iroquois people inhabited the region. Dates are difficult to ascertain, but legend, archeology, and solar eclipse history suggest that an Iroquois Confederacy of Five Nations around the Great Lakes formed by then. Those people surely suffered from urological problems and undoubtedly tried many remedies to ease their pains, although the ailments either dissipated or claimed the poor sufferers’ lives. [Above: Painting by Roy Lichtenstein, 1965. Below, Map of Five Nations, De Lisle, 1718. Darlington Collection, University of Pittsburgh.]

map_of_the_country_of_the_five_nations_belonging_to_the_province_of_new_york_and_of_the_lakes_near_which_the_nations_of_far_indians_live_with_part_of_canada_taken_from_the_map_of_the_lou

French explorers, beginning with Étienne Brûlé, around 1610, Samuel de Champlain, and later René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, attempted to colonize the regional home of the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca who comprised the Iroquois Five Nations. The Tuscarora joined the confederacy in 1722 to become the Six Nations that eventually were overwhelmed by Europeans.

Three.

Prelude to UM. Detroit, a settlement town in the western territory of a young United States, was initially referred to as the straights. Michigan became a distinct territory, carved from the Northwest Territory by congressional act, 30 June 1805. First governor William Hull and presiding judge Augustus B. Woodward described its history, in their first report, with the French penetration of Lake Michigan, the “Ouisconsin” River and the Mississippi down to its “mouth,” defaulting to the French feudal system of property ownership by aristocratic right (seigniorial), but offering no sensitivity to the Native American perspective:

“Prior to this era the settlements of the strait had commenced, and Detroit claims an antiquity of fifteen years superior to the city of Philadelphia. The few titles granted by the government of France were of three French acres in front, on the bank of the river, by forty feet in depth, subject to the feudal and seignoral conditions, which usually accompanied titles in France.” [Michigan Historical Collections. 36:107, 1908.]

The claim in the report refers obliquely to La Salle who buried an engraved plate and cross near what is now Venice, Louisiana, on April 9, 1682 to assert ownership of the territory by France. Hull and Woodward didn’t have all their facts in order regarding Philadelphia, also founded in 1682 but a month earlier on March 4 when William Penn made it the capital of Pennsylvania Colony. Great Britain assumed the French possessions after the 1763 Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Year’s War. Another Treaty of Paris, in 1783, ended the Revolutionary War, and the territory that would become Michigan was acquired from Canada by the United States. The Hull and Woodward Report tells of the sad circumstances of Detroit in June of 1805 just after it had burned to the ground:

“It was the unfortunate fate of the new government to commence its operations in a scene of the deepest public and private calamity. By the conflagration of Detroit, which took place on the morning of the 11th of June, all the buildings of that place, both public and private, were entirely consumed; and the most valuable part of the personal property of the inhabitants was lost. On the arrival of the new government [Woodward arrived Saturday June 29 and Hull on Monday July 1]. A part of the people were found encamped on the public grounds, in the vicinity of the town, and the remainder were dispersed through the neighboring settlements of the country; both on the British and the American side of the boundary… The place which bore the appellation of the town of Detroit was a spot of about 2 acres of ground, completely covered with buildings, and combustible material…” [Central Michigan University. Clarke Historical Library. 1805. Hull.]

Detroit rebounded from the fire and was on the upswing when The War of 1812 broke out and the town, indefensible, surrendered to the British on 6 August. An attempt to regain Detroit by General William Henry Harrison failed in January 1813, but on 10 September Commodore Perry’s fleet of nine small ships defeated six heavily armed Royal Navy ships on Lake Erie and returned the city to the United States. One quarter of the recruited American soldiers were African American. The British retreated up the Thames River in Canada, where the decisive Thames Battle on 5 October turned the tide against Great Britain and Tecumseh’s Confederacy (recounted here in Matula Thoughts last year). This story is a prelude to the University of Michigania, organized in Detroit in 1817.

Four.

New Year resolutions have faded into memory by now for all but the most resolute of us, although it’s worth reflecting that resolutions and intentions reflect the best versions of our imperfect selves. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an architect of some of the best of modern American society, was particularly good with his public words, few more noteworthy than in his First Inaugural Address on March 4, 1933 during the depth of the Great Depression: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Yet, no more or less imperfect than most of us today, FDR sometimes crumbled from fear himself, as early in WWII with Executive Order 9066 February 19, 1942, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe “Military Areas”:

“Whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded there from, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas.” [Below: FDR at Yalta. DG Chandor portrait at SAAM, Washington.]

chandor. fdr yalta

The Executive Order quickly became actual law on March 21, 1942 when Roosevelt signed Public Law 503, put forth by Congress after 30-minute discussion in the House and an hour in the Senate, thus evicting 122,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry (two thirds were American citizens) from their West Coast homes to incarceration camps. Americans of German and Italian ancestry were similarly targeted, but with much smaller numbers. Another Executive Order, number 9102 signed 18 March 1942, created the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to manage the forced relocation and internment. Milton Eisenhower was its first director, but only for a few months. His successor, Dillon Myer asked Eisenhower if he should take the job and was told:

“Dillon, if you can sleep and still carry on the job my answer would be yes. I can’t sleep and do this job. I had to get out of it.” [NYT 3 May 1965.] [Oral history interview with Dillon S. Myer. Harry S. Truman Presidential Library.]

Ultimately, 18 Civilian Assembly Centers, 10 Relocation Centers of the WRA, 9 Justice Department Centers (with German-American and Italian-American detainees), 3 Citizen Isolation centers (for “problem inmates”), 3 Federal Bureau of Prisons sites (mainly for draft resisters), 18 U.S. Army facilities, and 7 Immigration and Naturalization Services’ facilities were involved in detentions. The Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During WWII revisits this sad story with the Golden Crane sculpture of Nina Akamu showing two Japanese cranes caught in barbed wire. Semicircular granite walls name the ten main WRA internment camps and The Archipelago on the open perimeter along Louisiana Avenue near D Street in Washington, DC, symbolizes the Japanese Islands and the five generations of Japanese Americans affected by the war. [Below: Two Cranes. DAB January, 2018.]

japanese monument

Five.

Hourglasses turn the ephemeral notion of time into physical reality. The grains of sand are elementary chemicals assembling by physical rules into worthy objects, stardust like ourselves. Laws of chemistry and physics that created stardust are durable and universal. Human rules are fungible and we hope that representational government and good leaders bend them to fairness, allowing redress when rules are improper, archaic, wrong-headed, or harmful to the public good. All sorts of rules, federal, state, local, professional, organizational, sectarian, familial, and personal ones constrain us, and sometimes they seem to come out of the blue as with presidential directives. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, considered here last month, and FDR’s Executive Order 9066 raise the issue of these curious sidebars of American law. A report of the Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, by legislative attorney John Contrubis (updated March 9, 1999) explains the origin and usage of these two “Presidential instruments” (below).

pres proclam

The Constitution provides no explicit authority for executive orders and proclamations, although Article II states: “the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States,” “the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States,” and “he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Dogmatic originalism, might then argue to exclude the Air Force from presidential authority, or stipulate that a president execute all laws faithfully to their letter (rather than broad interpretation of Constitutional intent), or that a president must be a “he.” Such pedantic exercises unnaturally infuse human rules with an immutability similar to natural laws of chemistry and physics.

emanc proc

As humans, we elevate some of our laws to higher truths, such as belief in human liberty, the sanctity of life, equality of opportunity, and the right to pursue happiness, recognizing that these “self-evident truths” are perhaps on a higher plane than laws of prohibition, zoning, speed limits, or executive orders. Executive orders are legally binding directives given by the president to federal agencies in the executive branch, while executive proclamations may be ceremonial, policy announcements celebrations (Mother’s Day), or statements of a condition (e.g. of national mourning for the death of George HW Bush). Clearly there is overlap between orders and proclamations; the Emancipation Proclamation was as much an order as a proclamation. [Above: Emancipation Proclamation, Clements Library, University of Michigan. Below: 1914 Proclamation of Woodrow Wilson designating Mother’s Day.]

mother's day proclamation copy

Six.

Lysekno. Civic laws can cast long shadows that undermine education and science, setting human laws and policies at odds with the natural world. The Trofim Lysekno (1898-1976) story is a cautionary tale. That Russian biologist rejected Mendelian genetics and proposed his own theory of environmentally-acquired inheritance, offering experimental results with improved crop yields by his methods (unverified by others) and convincing Joseph Stalin to embrace Lysenkoism nationally. Soviet scientists who opposed the idea were dismissed from their posts, if not killed as “enemies of the state.” [Fitzpatrick S. Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. Oxford University Press. 1994. p. 4-5.] Forced collectivization and famine followed in the 1930’s, but Lysenko’s political power consolidated and in 1940 he became director of the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1948, scientific dissent from Lysenko’s theory was outlawed.

After Stalin died in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev retained Lysenko in his post, but scientific opposition resurfaced and his agricultural influence declined. In 1964, Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) physicist, architect for the Soviet thermonuclear bomb, but later Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize Recipient (1975), denounced Lysenko to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1964 saying:

“He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for adventurism, for the degrading of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists.” [Norman L, Qing NL, Yuan JL. Biography of Andrei Sakharov, dissent period. The Seevak Website Competition.] [Cohen BM. The descent of Lysenko. The Journal of Heredity. 56:229-233, 1965.] [Cohen BM. The demise of Lysenko. The Journal of Heredity. 68:57, 1977.]

Lysenko died in Moscow in 1976 with only brief mention in the daily national newspaper. His politically enforced scientific pseudo-science had tragic consequences for millions of people in Soviet Russia. Lysenko wasn’t the first to consider the effects of environment on inheritance, Lamarck (1744-1829) had that thought much earlier. Open scientific give and take has since shown that Mendelian and other genetic processes are indeed influenced if not largely regulated by epigenetic factors. Science works well, but not when corrupted by ideology.

Seven.

573px-the_gerry-mander_edit

Too bad Gerrymanders aren’t mythical creatures. These Homo sapiens look-a-likes actually exist, grabbing and abusing transient authority to distort reality and fairness to gain political advantage. Democracy as expressed in our origin-document, The Declaration of Independence is built upon shared belief in fairness, but when fairness is seriously undermined, authoritarianism creeps back into public life – authority of a political party, authority of a leader, authority of a particular ideology, authority of a religion, or authority of a class of people. History shows this human propensity again and again with tribalism, kingdoms, monarchies, dictators, cults, single-party nations, etc. Gerrymander came from Elkanah Tisdale’s cartoon in the Boston Centinel, 1812, showing the district created by the Massachusetts Legislature to favor incumbent Democratic-Republican candidates over the Federalists. [Above: Tisdale’s creature in the Centinel, 1812. Below: Michigan districts.]

mich congressional

Eradication of the gerrymander is one of democracy’s existential necessities. This problem is exacerbated by the algorithmically-targeted misinformation made possible by personal data mining. This perversion of free speech is dramatized in the Netflix film, Brexit.

Eight.

history hall

History Hall. Along the passages connecting University Hospital, Frankel Cardiovascular Center, Rogel Cancer Center, and Medical Sciences I buildings are pictures of most of the Medical School graduating classes. Even as faculty and staff walk briskly through them, discussing their work, the decorative walls and the light from the glass tunnel are pleasant and even refreshing. If you have a chance to linger briefly and look, the pictures take your walk through a history of paradigm changes, economic booms and busts, great discoveries, inspiring leaders, wars, bad actors, duds, and all the other stuff of 170 years. Each student and faculty member in the class pictures is an individual summation of countless personal dramas and stories. [Above: David Fox and Joe McCune.]

Maybe stepping aside as chair (I don’t think of it so much as “stepping down” or a loss, but I am truly pleased to have Ganesh Palapattu pick up the challenges, present and ahead) gives me too much time for lingering walks and gratuitous thoughts. Framed by all the larger problems of the world (geopolitical conflict, terrorism, poverty, widening inequality, economic unpredictability, environmental degradation, infectious diseases, and other existential threats) one must wonder: can we humans successfully control our own destiny? If so, some structure and rules are obviously necessary for 7 billion people on a small planet, but will the structures and rules revert to ancient painful models of authoritarian rule and pyramidal hierarchy, or could they tilt toward libertarian, laissez-faire, or anarchistic models although those have never proven successful at large scale?

The question is not merely rhetorical, it is existential and an answer needs to be found between those extremes, within some central range. How we find, set, and reset that optimal place in our laws is the ultimate political question. Representational democracy, even as terribly imperfect as it is, seems to offer the best framework to balance individual freedom and happiness with optimization of societal function, human destiny, and planetary sustainability. This same dilemma of governance, structure, and rule-setting is recapitulated in localities and large organizations, even that of Michigan Medicine. These may seem strange Matula Thoughts for the moment and solutions are beyond the wisdom of this writer, but with 7 billion points of wisdom, good answers should abound. Lingering walks through history halls can help.

Nine.

Academic urology at Michigan effectively began in the autumn of 1919 when Hugh Cabot came to Ann Arbor, and for that reason we begin a year of centennial celebration with our Nesbit Alumni Reunion October 3-5, 2019. Cabot’s 11 years at Michigan were transformative, but disruptive and (yes) often authoritarian, leading the regents to dismiss him in February, 1930, “…in the interests of greater harmony.” His next phase of work was at the Mayo Clinic where he focused on large issues of health care, such as testifying to Congress in favor of multispecialty group practice against the position of the AMA. Cabot’s final book, The Patient’s Dilemma, written in 1940, concludes with reflections on the problems that democratic systems have in planning the future. “It may well be – if we preserve our sense of humor – that we may suspect that the phrases ‘long distance planning’ and the ‘democratic process’ are in fact contradictions of terms.” While allowing for individual freedoms of opinions and rights to change them and exercise them through voting, Cabot explains that a democratic society that cannot make long term plans and carry them out is reduced to an “absurdity.” Cabot ends the book thus:

“…we have an immense body of opinion, part of which is in this country, a handsome part of it elsewhere, which continues in spite of discouragements, to believe that there is in all human beings an inherent and irresistible desire for certain freedoms which can be obtained only under democracy. Such a view seems to me based upon irrefutable evidence going back to the beginnings of the world. Its validity I cannot doubt. Once we admit this premise, once we admit that we believe that there are in democracy certain inherent benefits essential to progressive civilization, then we are driven to the conclusion that though long distance planning under democracy is beset with many vicissitudes, nevertheless such plans must be made and, by dint of good temper and the laws of the cosmos, they may come to fruition.” [Cabot H. The Patient’s Dilemma: The Quest for Medical Security in America. 1940.]

Ten.

Stardust, Hoagy Carmichael’s popular song, came to his mind in 1927 when visiting his alma mater, Indiana University, where he had earned a bachelor’s degree in 1925 and law degree in 1926. Mitchell Parish added lyrics in 1929 and the song has been recorded by Bing Crosby (1931), Nat King Cole (1956), and Willie Nelson (1978) among many others. The music and the lyrics are equally compelling, with Parish linking “the purple dust of twilight time,” the stars, and memories of a lover: “And now my consolation is in the stardust of a song.”

The original title was two words, Star Dust. Astronomers have learned much about the topic since Hoagy’s day: the elements of stardust larger than hydrogen and helium up to the size of iron required solar furnaces for their creation, but larger elements required the greater manufacturing complexity of supernovae. The fact that life is literally made of stardust is not just a figure of speech, the stardust of a song is a lyrical metaphor of a higher order of magnitude. Lying somewhere between cosmic stardust and its human incarnation is the daily work and politics of humanity, and these have been the focus of matulathoughts.org.

I came to Ann Arbor in 1984 from Walter Reed and the U.S. Army at the invitation of Section Head Ed McGuire, who very positively impacted the world of urology and myself. I inherited the stewardship of Michigan Urology from another great urologist and our inaugural chair, Jim Montie. Previous leaders of urology at Michigan educated superb urologists from Nobel Prize winner Charles Huggins and Reed Nesbit, the first section head, through Jack Lapides who trained another splendid cohort, including Hugh Solomon whom we often see at Grand Rounds. [Below, Hugh and Jim.] Following Jack, we had Ed, Joe Oesterling, Bart Grossman, and then Jim. They all brought things to the table, so to speak.

screen shot 2019-01-16 at 7.47.03 am

My appreciation is profound to our faculty, staff, Nesbit alumni, and friends of the department. You have made my time as chair a joy. Sandy Heskett has been with me from the start of my administrative duties in Allen Lichter’s dean’s office and she has somehow dissolved the problems of each day and kept our department as well as your old chair on track. Jack Cichon and Malissa Eversole have been incomparable in their work and loyalty to our team. Thanks, too, to my colleagues and friends on the faculty, in the Dean’s office, and on central campus. It has been a great run for me, but it isn’t over yet.

We appreciate your interest and will be back here on the first Friday of March at this website: matulathoughts.org. and meanwhile encourage any comments from you.

David A. Bloom
University of Michigan, Department of Urology, Ann Arbor

Rules, boundaries, and stories

Posted by dabloom

DAB What’s New June 1, 2018

Rules, boundaries, & stories

3722 words

One.

Colors explode as summer opens up in June around Ann Arbor. The visuals are unsurpassed in the UM Nichols Arboretum Peony Garden, adjacent to Mott Children’s Hospital. The garden is a few years short of a century old and derives from Dr. WE Upjohn’s flower collection (pictures above and below, May 29, 2018).

Schools let out in June and summer vacation begins for most students north of the equator, echoing our agrarian history when children needed to be free to work on family farms. Today, farms don’t depend on child labor and most schoolchildren come from urban/suburban homes, the rural: urban ratio having flipped in the last 150 years. In 1870, 25.7% of the US population (38.5 million) was urban and 74.3% was rural, while by 1990 the ratio was 75.2% urban and 24.8% rural (population 248.7 million) and the trend continues, although summer vacation still rules in most schools and workplaces. [Table 4 US Census Data 1993.]

Doctors in training don’t get summers off, they have full 12 month cycles of education, with one random month for vacation, and our new cohort begins its turn next month here in Ann Arbor. [Above: Grand Rounds.] Time has framed graduate medical education in urology since the formalization of the American Board of Urology in 1935. Urology trainees at Michigan spend five years of postgraduate training after medical school, shorter than my time of residency at UCLA, although residents today are increasingly likely to put in additional years for fellowship training. The idea of “duty hour” limitation was a reaction to a few bad training programs that exploited residents, and the 80-hour work week is the national standard for residents in training. Another quantitative constraint is the concept of minimum numbers of specific operative procedures.

A qualitative dimension of regulation, educational milestones, was implemented within the last decade. Milestones reflected the enticing idea that GME should not routinely progress only according to clock, calendar, and case numbers, but according to acquisition of skills. The increased burden of administrative time and paperwork to document milestones, however, has been unmatched by any demonstrable value for trainees or programs and, if common sense prevails, milestones will likely get swapped out for another idea or experiment. Nonetheless, it is clear that time and numbers alone should not be the only measures of residency education.

Our new GME cohort. Residents Kathryn Marchetti from UM, Kyle Johnson from University of South Carolina, Javier Santiago from Baylor Medical School, and Roberto Navarrete from Wake Forest School of Medicine. Fellows Giulia Lane from University of Minnesota (FPMRS) and Jeffrey Tosoian from Johns Hopkins Hospital (SUO). New Faculty: Bryan Sack from Boston Children’s Hospital and Courtney Streur who completes her pediatric urology fellowship both join our Pediatric Urology Division. Kristin Chrouser has joined our faculty this year from the University of Minnesota in NPR and will be mainly at the VA.

Two.

Time, curiously, has no role in baseball, the game of summertime. The sport has no relation to a clock – rather milestones of innings, runs, and outs mark the game’s progress. In this, baseball lends itself to being the ideal summer sport, unfettered by time and limited only by accumulation of three failures or “outs” and innings unless bad weather intervenes or until it gets too dark to play.

Baseball at Night, a painting by Morris Kantor on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, shows a minor-league game in West Nyack, NY, around 1934. Stadium lighting was a rarity then, given the long days of summer when play could continue until dark, although twilight made the game tenuous. Stadium lights shifted quickly from novelty to necessity and major league teams have played deliberate night games since 1935.

It’s hard to imagine baseball or any other sport without limits and rules, even if arbitrary or parochial, such as the designated hitter rule that now applies to one major league but not another. Rules matter and when different leagues play each other, they find it necessary to have rules that supervene their particular league rules. Rules create fair playing fields, allowing games to go forward and conclude peacefully.

Rules are equally essential for other social activities, organizations, and governments. The USA has the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The State of Michigan has its own constitution and laws, including term limits that guarantee frequent refreshment of the state legislature, but at the expense of deep institutional knowledge of the state and its components. The University of Michigan has its Regent’s Bylaws and Standard Practice Guide, as well as Michigan Medicine’s own sets of Bylaws. In all of these we rely on consensus for decisions, achieved casually in daily operations, more formally in committees (using Robert’s Rules of Order), and more broadly by public voting.

Three.

Communication skills are a pre-requisite for medical practice in both the essential transactions of direct patient care and in the complex team play of modern specialty medicine. [Above in foreground, Brent Williams, Professor of Internal Medicine, communicating with Michael Giacalone, Jr., Chief Medical Officer of the Hamilton Community Health Network in Flint.] Listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills are taught with variable degrees of success in elementary schools up through college, but medical practice demands more vocabulary and capabilities. Medical students, it is said, double the size of their vocabularies.

The traditional algorithm of healthcare starts with listening to the concerns of patients and then probing for additional information to construct a medical history, including relevant comorbidities and circumstances. Patients are physically examined and data is assembled into coherent narratives. Diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy derive from those stories in which authenticity and accuracy are assumed.

Modern electronic systems impose new communication challenges. Email and texting are immediate and convenient, but lack the human factors of facial cues, thoughtfulness, and social grace. Electronic medical records (EMRs) constrain work flows to templates and replace human narratives with check lists, pop-up choices, keyboard entries, and cut-and-paste phrases. The actions of data entry detract from listening, looking, and communicating with patients. Healthcare processes today do not prioritize stories, and it seems to me that appreciation of the art of the story lies at the heart of excellent clinical care. It’s no great leap of faith to claim that the art of authentic storytelling and story construction is the basis of most human relations, from compelling stories around campfires to A3 storytelling in lean process engineering. Truth and authenticity matter. Listening to them and weaving them are art forms.

Four.

Physician-author William Carlos Williams appeared on these pages earlier this spring and since then I’ve been thinking of the different contexts in which physicians write, and first and foremost, physicians write the stories of their patients.

Williams, you may recall, was the author of Spring and All of which a recent edition included an introduction by C. D. Wright comparing Williams to an earlier poet from New Jersey, Walt Whitman: “Like Whitman, he [Williams] would gradually come to a great human understanding, an apprehension that eluded most of his peers.” [Spring and All. WC Williams. New Directions Book, 2011.]

We pursue that greater human understanding on a daily basis, working in medicine, through stories learned and experiences gained, patient-by-patient. The dilemmas of patients are understood in terms of their stories, that must be heard, elucidated, and constructed from evidence and reasoning on the part of those who undertake the responsibility for helping. Stories are important to people, and we dignify them with our attention.

Electronic medical records are poor platforms for authentic narratives. The construction of narratives in the minds of physicians and the translation to visible words in some medium is a core element of the profession of medicine, framing the response of the care-giver in terms of advice, reassurance, therapy, and prognosis. This is the central organizing feature of the doctor-patient relationship, comprising the daily shop-talk of medical practice. A story must be accurate, with true facts, but also authentic, in reflecting circumstances and co-morbidities (an economist might call these externalities) framing the “present illness” and creating a context for further conversation and therapy. In my experience, an authentic and empathetic story only fully emerges after the history, physical exam, and further discussion with patient and family.

My own clinic notes were once written or dictated well-after the clinical visit when the story was relatively complete and coherent. The reduction of clinical notes to formulaic elements such as the SOAP format (subjective, objective, assessment, and plan) or the E&M format (Evaluation & Management: chief complaint, history of present illness, review of systems, etc.) fits computer entry systems nicely, but has disrupted the traditional medical work-flow that create stories.

It is challenging to find the words to describe this fundamental type of medical writing whether in narratives or EHR. Quotidian medical communication seems to fit, even though not everyone is familiar with the use of quotidian for daily or routine. Quotidian communication must be accurate, truthful, and authentic to each patient. Most healthcare workers are writers and their products are stories of patients. A brief piece in The Lancet by Roger Kneebone called “The art of conversation” expresses the idea of the clinical conversation that we have clumsily called “taking a history.” Kneebone expressed his thoughts more elegantly than I have, so I’ll just quote two sentences and refer you to the rest. [The Lancet. 391:731, 2018.]
“A conversation is a one-off live performance that can never be repeated. Its essence is its evanescence, and attempts to capture in writing are as thin as reading the script of a play or film.”

Five.

Stories suffuse all types of medical writing. Scientific writing for journals, grants, or textbooks is the bedrock of healthcare research and progress. Just as with stories of patients, this writing is predicated on accuracy, and clarity is enhanced when a meaningful story is constructed from the science. Medical journalism, another form of medical writing, communicates to the public about medical science and practice. Medical memoir is another important genre, also written for the public but usually as personal storytelling or essays.

William Carlos Williams and others divert into creative reflections through prose and poetry. These writers mainly tell stories they create, often based on authentic experiences, but with “literary license.” Many of these physician-writers venture into fiction at the other end of the spectrum of medical writing, although this too requires authenticity in that stories revolve around individual experiences, conflicts, tensions, issues, and environments that are genuine to the reader’s senses. The fictions may involve other species or galaxies, as with the work of Michael Crichton, but if the stories are well-crafted they contribute to that greater authentic human understanding. To summarize medical writing variants: a.) the daily writing of clinical practice, b.) scientific writing, c.) medical journalism, d.) medical memoir, e.) creative reflections, and f.) fiction.

We are a species of stories and understand ourselves through stories far better than through data. That greater human understanding is accessed through narrative better than through numbers. The novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, in his 2017 Nobel Prize Lecture, praised the “… quiet private sparks of revelation …” to be found in stories. “Stories can entertain, sometimes teach or argue a point. But for me the essential thing is that they communicate feelings. That they appeal to what we share as human beings across our borders and divides.” [Ishiguro. My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs. AE Knopf. NY 2017.]

Six.

A pig story. It doesn’t take much to disturb a comfortable status quo or otherwise disrupt peaceful human relations. An obscure story exemplifying this began on June 15, 1859 on San Juan Island, a place east of Vancouver Island where both the United States and Great Britain claimed sovereignty, after the Oregon Treaty of June 15, 1846, exactly 13 years earlier. [Below: blue Haro Strait boundary favored by US, red Rosario Strait favored by Britain, green compromise proposal. Copyright Derek Hayes, Historical Atlas of the Pacific Northwest. Sasquatch Books, Seattle, 1999.]

Peaceful co-existence remained in play until a British pig, owned by Hudson’s Bay Company employee Charles Griffin, wandered onto an American farm to eat some potatoes. This wasn’t the first transgression and Lyman Cutlar, the American farmer, shot and killed the trespassing pig. Cutler’s offer of $10 compensation was refused and the British threatened to arrest him. Sixty-six American soldiers under the command of Captain George Pickett were dispatched to the island to prevent British forces from landing. The British countered, bringing three warships offshore, soon escalating to five ships, 70 guns, and 2140 men. American forces then swelled to 461 men with 14 cannons, as diplomacy failed and the dispute escalated into The Pig War. The British governor of Vancouver Island ordered Rear Admiral Robert Baynes to land his marines on San Juan Island, but Baynes wisely refused to further escalate the “squabble over a pig” and the war remained bloodless, aside from the porcine tragedy.

In October, President Buchanan sent General Winfield Scott to resolve the crisis and negotiations resulted in an agreement that the British could occupy the north half and the Americans the south with each side allowed up to 100 troops pending further formal agreement. No wall was built, and in 1872, a full 13 years after the ill-fated pig, an international commission led by Kaiser Wilhelm I, decided that the entire island should fall under American control and so it remains.

Seven.

Henry Martyn Robert was one of the 66 American soldiers stationed on San Juan Island under Pickett’s leadership. It’s hard to know how he felt about his mortal jeopardy over the cause of a pig, but it’s a good thing the conflict remained bloodless and Robert went on to bigger things. Born in Robertville, South Carolina, he grew up in Ohio where his family moved due to their opposition to slavery. Robert’s father, Reverend Joseph Thomas Robert, would later become the first president of Morehouse College (1871-1884). Henry went to West Point and graduated fourth in his class in 1857, becoming a military engineer and building the fortifications on San Juan Island in 1859. He remained with the North during the Civil War, attending to defenses around Washington, Philadelphia, and New England Harbors. After the war, he served the Army Division of the Pacific from 1867-1871, then developed ports in Wisconsin and Michigan, later improved harbors in New York and Philadelphia, constructed locks and dams in Tennessee, and performed more civil engineering pertaining to the Mississippi River and Hurricane Isaac in Galveston. He died in 1923 and is buried at Arlington. [Below: Brigadier General Henry Martyn Robert, Wikipedia.]

Although Robert’s military service was significant, we remember him today for his civil engineering of practical rules for human interaction. These came about in 1876 after losing control of a church meeting he was leading in New Bedford, Massachusetts when it erupted over abolitionist views. Robert blamed his ineptitude for the fiasco and decided to teach himself how to run a meeting. His study of the procedures of the House of Representatives led to his Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies. He wrote:
“One can scarcely have had much experience in deliberative meetings of Christians without realizing that the best of men, having wills of their own, are liable to attempt to carry out their own views without paying sufficient respect to the rights of their opponents.”

Robert’s world was framed by his gender and faith, but his rules have endured because they are independent of his particularities. Robert’s Rules of Order apply to almost any human gathering and, like the rules of baseball, Robert’s Rules level the playing field and allow the game to go forward. [“Historical Vignette 038 – An Army Engineer Brought Order to Church Meetings.” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – Office of History. November 2001. Retrieved 2015-12-02.] His rules offer protocols for civilized and democratic behavior.

Eight.

Michigan hosted its first Teeter Symposium last month, focusing on bladder cancer in honor of our Ann Arbor friend Bob Teeter, who died a decade ago from bladder cancer in spite of radical cystectomy. [Above, Bob and Betsy Teeter; below, Teeter Laboratory Plaque.]

Since then, knowledge and therapy of bladder cancer have increased by a quantum leap, although more leaps are necessary to obliterate the pain, suffering, and mortality of that disease. The day-long event, organized by Alon Weizer, featured 2 guest speakers and held an attentive audience that topped 50, with excellent talks and superb discussions. The event fulfills one of the items on my bucket list as department chair and honored not just Bob and his surgeon Jim Montie, but also some generous gifts for laboratory investigation that we gained after Bob passed away.

The first guest lecturer, Thomas Bender, MD, PhD (above) from Dow Chemical, spoke about the Health Hazard Evaluation Program for former employees of a chemical plant that had been closed in 2002, but Dow later acquired its parent company, Morton, in 2009. As I sat in the audience, wondering how to link this month’s Matula Thoughts to the Teeter Symposium, Dr. Bender said a magic word: Paterson. That’s where the chemical plant had been since 1929. Paterson, New Jersey, was the home of William Carlos Williams.

The next invited speaker, Elizabeth Plimack MD, MS, Chief of Genitourinary Medical Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center, grew up in Ann Arbor. Her parents and mentor Richard Swartz were on hand to hear her excellent talk Immunotherapy and Beyond. In attendance was Monica Liebert (Nesbit 1984 below), now retired, but still working in our laboratories. Monica developed many bladder cancer cell lines in her heyday and these are still utilized in our research efforts.

Our own Khaled Hafez (below, Nesbit 2004) closed the event with a superb talk on Clinical Management of Patients with Locally Advanced Bladder Cancer, a topic close to his heart and emblematic of his skill set, as he is surely one of the best in the world at this craft.

Nine.

The AUA annual meeting last month in San Francisco featured the usual strong Michigan presence. San Francisco was also the site in 2010 where the picture of our inaugural chair, Jim Montie (Faculty Nesbit 1995), was taken. In addition to turning over a very strong group of faculty and department, in 2007 when the current departmental administration began, Jim turned over a positive team culture, rather than a “me-me-me” culture. Jim not only remained relevant to the department, but remains a keen participant and a role model of leadership.

Looking through those 2010 Nesbit reception pictures, I found a picture of the late and truly great Cornell Urology Chair, Darracott Vaughan, flanked by Jennifer Anger of UCLA and Hunter Wessells, chair at the University of Washington in Seattle (below).

But now back to 2018.

Above: Emilie Johnson, Nesbit 2011, with her iconic mentor from Boston, Alan Retik. Below: Julian Wan, Nesbit 1990, at one of his podium appearances, knocking it out of the park.

[Below: Music reception with Khurshid Ghani, Faculty Nesbit 2013, & David Miller, Nesbit 2005.]

The Nesbit reception this year at the Hotel Vitale on Mission Street hosted around 100 alumni, friends, and current team of the Urology Department. Below, a partial view of the crowd.

[Above: Damon Davis, Nesbit 2007. Brian Sack will start with us in pediatric urology this summer. Kristin Chrouser joined us this winter from Minneapolis and is centered at the VA. Below: Irene Crescenze current fellow FPMRS, Cheryl Lee, Nesbit 1997, now chair at Ohio State, Bert Chen, Nesbit 2006.]

[Above: Stu Wolf, Faculty Nesbit 1996, now in Austin, Udit Singhal PGY 2, Alon Weizer Faculty Nesbit 2005, Bunmi Olapade-Olaopa Nesbit, 2000. Below; Betty Newsom, Nesbit 1990, Bart and Amy Grossman, Nesbit 1977.

[Above: Lynda Ng, Nesbit 2005 and Jerilyn Latini, Faculty Nesbit 2003. Below: Steve & Faith Brown, friends of Michigan.]

[Above: Tom Stringer, Dept Urology Florida, Barry Kogan, Nesbit 1981 and Chair Albany. Below: Hugh Flood, Nesbit 1991, of Clonlara, County Clare, Ireland. Below: Simpa Salami, Nesbit 2017 & guest Mohamed Jalloh of Dakar, Senegal.]

Ten.

Boundary matters. A few months past the JAMA column, A Piece of My Mind, came from Jeffrey Milstein at Penn Medicine [Milstein. The envelope. JAMA. 319:23, 2018] and detailed his office visit with a 70-year-old patient who carried a large white envelope, assumed to be “outside records.” Most of us get these, not infrequently, indicating that a second or third opinion is expected. On the occasion of this particular visit, the details were those of a 32-year old son who had recently passed away due to cancer. The envelope contained a stack of records with an obituary on top. The patient first wanted to talk about his son and then the course of his disease, tests, hospitalizations, treatments, and emotional toll. Then, after “a long moment of silence” the patient explained that he himself had not been to a physician in years, but needed to tell his son’s story before committing to his own care. The clock had run down by then and “the time for the visit” was over leaving nothing that could be documented in the EHR about the patient himself. The author noted “so another visit must be scheduled.”

So, it seems medical care today has tight boundaries of time and information. Boundaries for nations, sports, politics, education, business, are important, but some are more important than others. The Pig War, a foolish dispute, easily could have escalated to bloodshed, leaving us no Robert’s Rules. Rules and boundaries in sports allow games to proceed fairly and end peacefully. Some boundaries in health care are tight and timeless, as evidenced in the Hippocratic Oath or as shamefully dishonored by occasional bad actors. The constraints of the EHR are self-inflicted wounds of the business of medicine, and should be viewed with minor contempt and never honored at the expense of a patient.

Baseball, timeless as it is, nonetheless must be somewhat mindful of the clock. Some fans may have babysitters, while transportation drivers and other workers are paid by the hour. The number of pitches thrown is a clock of a sort. Still, the essence of the game is indifferent to time. The same is true for conversations with patients. Life and schedules are much easier when each patient’s visit goes according to clockwork precision, but the essential transaction of the crucial conversations not infrequently runs afoul of anticipated timed encounters. These conversations are unique in the human repertoire and can have the most profound implications. Skilled clinicians know when and how to diplomatically crowd the later patients, run through lunch, or regroup with an expansive patient later in the day or soon thereafter. Such is the art of medicine.

Thanks for reading Matula Thoughts this June, 2018.
David A. Bloom
University of Michigan, Department of Urology, Ann Arbor

Matula Thoughts March 4, 2016

Posted by dabloom

DAB What’s New March 4, 2016

The March of time, money, & art

3923 words

One. Time flies, but sometimes we have to slow it down. Today would have been March 5, but for a corrective leap year adjustment. This necessity is proof of the slightly imperfect alignment of humans to nature – we meter out our seasons and years with great reliance on lunar and solar cycles, yet our calendars and clocks can’t quite match heavenly reality. Nevertheless, since Robert Hooke’s anchor escape device, human ingenuity has been measuring time with increasing precision. Pocket watches, developed in the 16^th century, were the most common personal timekeepers until military trench watches (pocket watches with lugs for a strap) became popular around WWI, proving more practical than a watch in a soldier’s pocket. The wristwatch quickly came into fashion. Today cellphones threaten wristwatches for top position in personal timekeeping, although wrists are contesting the matter with physical activity trackers that also monitor time, pulse, and even messaging alerts. Whether by wrist, phone, or clock most people are compelled to track time at home and at work. In the health care environment time measurement has come to sharply impact patient care and residency education due to intense attention on clinical throughput and duty hour regulations. [The pocket watch shown above is a rare Donald Mozart three-wheel mechanism watch made over 150 years ago.]

Two. Time is money, it is often said. If I need furnace repairs this winter, a repairman will reacquaint me with that fact. This is also true for legal services, cabs, baby sitters, or employees in your business. Ultimately, because most of us are employees for someone or some organization, we each have a personal stake in the belief that time equates to money. Healthcare used to be somewhat different, being a professional service in which the service was valued as a parcel of work rather than a unit of time. A doctor’s visit, for example, was charged as the actual “visit” with the time factor accounted for indirectly. New knowledge and technology added complex services to the toolkit of health care and the relative value unit (RVU) joined the language of medicine. Urethral catheterization, for example, takes less time and expertise than radical cystectomy, a fact now accounted for in the charges or RVUs. The physician work RVU for catheterization (CPT 51702) is 0.5 (although after facility expenses and malpractice expenses are factored in the total RVU grows to 0.87 to 2.0 depending upon whether the work is done in a hospital or an office). For open radical cystectomy with urinary diversion (CPT 51590) the physician’s work RVU will be 36.33 and the total RVU including facility and malpractice expenses will be 55.66. The assignment of an RVU number to robotic cystectomy is under discussion. Radical cystectomy is one of the most technically difficult and risky operative procedures, with significant mortality, morbidity, complex postoperative care, and the highest postoperative readmission rates. In terms of work (preoperative, operative, postoperative, and global exposure) and liability it is easily more than the “equivalent” of 36.33 urethral catheterizations, in my opinion as someone who has performed both procedures. If it is your urethra getting catheterized, of course you want skill, kindness, and attention to the process. Yet, to equate the effort of 36 catheterizations to a single radical cystectomy is like comparing 36 bicycle rides to flying a Boeing 787 or Airbus A380 full of passengers across the Pacific Ocean. Both take skill and both carry some risk, but the differences are enormous. [Data thanks to Malissa Eversole & Irene Gundle]

Just as all procedures are not equal, neither are all clinic visits the same, although less disparity pertains. One new patient visit may be fairly straightforward with discovery of a simple problem defined as ICD-10 code X and perhaps a distinct solution proposed in the form of CPT code Y. If such simplicity had pertained for all my patients and clinics over the years, life would have been easier although less interesting. Some clinic visits are especially challenging, taking deep concentration and probing examinations and conversations that are not always easy. Occasional clinic encounters are excruciating, with unwilling kids, angry parents, painful social circumstances, and no clear solutions. Yet even these complex occasions are gifts of a sort in that they test our mettle and make the other encounters, by contrast, satisfying and sweet.

Most of us understand the need to steward resources, standardize work as much as possible, and create efficiencies to meet payrolls and manage our mission at large. However, a sharp focus on clinical throughput, with standardized 15-minute encounters and checklists that must be obeyed, runs counter to our values, counter to patient satisfaction, and counter to the excellence we espouse. Still, our eyes stray to clocks on the walls, (although it is a mystery why they are so often wrong) or watches on our wrists, the latter being easier to consult unobtrusively than cell phones and are more accurate than those wall clocks.

Three.

Ben Franklin wrote “time is money” in Advice to a Young Tradesman, written by an old one although the idea has a far older provenance. It is fitting that Ben is featured on our largest circulating currency denomination (since 1969 when larger bills were retired). The Franklin has become the international monetary standard and is worth more than its weight in gold if you figure that the bill weighs around a half a gram and with the price of gold at $1200 per ounce that comes to about $40 per gram or $20 for a Ben Franklin. The US Bureau of Engraving and Printing says that the average C-note remains in circulation about 7.5 years before replacement due to wear and tear. The new bill, with its anti-counterfeiting technology, costs about 12.5 cents to produce, compared to 7.8 cents for the older version (shown above) before 2013. Curiously, and I think dangerously, some people are calling for eliminating this “high” currency note, as humanity seems to be placing its faith in electronic monetary transactions. [Getting rid of big currency notes. NYT Editorial Feb. 22, 2016]

In health care, the concept that time is money applies across all nations and health care systems. In corporate U.S. health care, clinic visits are set in many places at 15 minutes of “face time” with physician, nurse practitioner, or PA. In the NHS of the United Kingdom 10 minutes is a common standard. In third world countries, any such face time might be a rare occasion unless you have cash in hand. Facilities and staff cost money and health care expenses need to be covered by some source, so it seems rational to measure and ration time as well as physical commodities. Facing off against such reality, however, is the nearly universal belief that health care is a natural human right and that its best delivered at the individual level by professions (and, now, teams of professionals).

Time value of money is a financial calculation that dates back to the early days of the School of Salamanca formed by Spanish and Portuguese theologians in northwestern Spain around the first half of the 16th century. (The old city of Salamanca in Castile and León is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.)

Martín de Azpilcueta (1491-1586), pictured above, was an early member of this important school of thought. This Basque canonist and theologian was an innovator of monetarist theory and it was he who allegedly conceptualized the time value of money in the sense that the present value (PV) of a sum of money equals its future value (FV) given a specified rate of return (r) divided by 1 plus r. That is if the Department of Urology gives the University of Michigan Clinical Enterprise $1,000,000 for new capital projects and assumes a rate of return of 7% (the typical interest rate for a savings account in days not so long past) then the FV at 10 years will be $1,700,000, assuming the original sum and the yearly interest returns remain intact. In other words, a million dollars today if invested in those circumstances could be worth 1.7 million dollars in 10 years. Of course, this is not quite as good as that historic savings account at 7% where the interest was compounded annually, in which case the future value at 10 years would be a little over $1,967,000. That is the difference between an annuity and a savings account. Darwinian forces have propelled financial markets to increasingly creative and complex devices, such as credit default swaps that gained recent attention in the film The Big Short, or the more recent contingent convertible bond (CoCo) that exchanges risk for the ability to suspend payment, convert the bond into equity, or write it off totally.

In 1748 Franklin wrote: “Remember that Time is Money. He that can earn Ten Shillings a Day by his Labour, and goes abroad or sits idle one half of that Day, tho’ he spends but Sixpence during his Diversion or Idleness, ought not to reckon That the only Expence; he has really spent, or rather, thrown away Five Shillings besides.” [Courtesy Kate Woodford at Yale University, Papers of Benjamin Franklin Project]

This is the innate paradox of academic medicine: since clinical revenue sustains the enterprise, every part of the day diverted to education, research, and administration is costly, lacking proportionate revenue. Nevertheless, education, research, and their administration are essential to our mission. For a healthy academic clinical department these other parts of the mission consume a minimum of 20% of a clinician’s effort and the ability to support those efforts comes from endowment, institutional support, and the overachievement of clinical faculty in terms of clinical productivity.

Four. As scarce as face-time may be for patients and the professionals who provide it, that time and attention within those moments are polluted by the mandatory processes of electronic health record systems, third party payer requirements, and demands of “meaningful use” documentation. I call your attention once again to the crayon drawing of a doctor’s visit by an 8-year old girl featured on a JAMA cover article in 2012 by Elizabeth Toll and contrast that to any of the many other artistic renderings of this ancient professional service from Renaissance painting to Normal Rockwell. Something seems to have changed. (Interestingly, Rockwell’s family doctor doesn’t seem to be wearing a watch.)

[Above: detail from The Family Doctor by Norman Rockwell 1947; Below: The cost of technology. JAMA 307: 2497, 2012. Elizabeth Toll. © Thomas C. Murphy, MD]

Five. Time piece manufacturing came to Ann Arbor 150 years ago when Donald J. Mozart moved here just after the stockholders of the MoZart Watch Company in Providence, Rhode Island fired him as superintendent. Mozart’s three-wheel watch had proven unsuccessful and the new superintendent replaced Mozart’s design with a conventional movement and renamed the firm the New York Watch Company. Mozart improved his 3-wheel design in Ann Arbor, but was able to produce only about 30 movements before closing up operations four years later in 1870.

He sold the manufacturing equipment to the Rock Island Watch Company for $40,000 cash plus $25,000 in stock and gave away the existing watches to stockholders and friends. One of these was recently sold at auction in NY [Introductory illustration & below: Bonhams Auction 21971 12 June 2014 Lot #1128 A very rare gold filled open face ‘chronometer-lever escapement’ watch Signed Don J. Mozart Patent Dec. 24, 1868. US$ 20,000-25,000].

Mozart was still living in Ann Arbor as of May 14, 1873 when he filed a patent from here, but died four years later in 1877 and was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery (as was Rensis Likert, discussed last month on these pages).

Six. A noteworthy and thoughtful artist, Evelyn Brodzinski, when asked her definition of what constitutes the stuff we call “art” replied, “Art is anything that is choice.” This idea stuck with me and I often quote her at our speaker introductions during the annual Chang Lecture on Art and Medicine each July during the Art Fair. This phrase came to me again when I read Hugh Solomon’s retirement letter this past December. With his retirement, urological manpower loses one of its most excellent physicians and surgeons. Retirement was a difficult decision, Hugh noted, but his timing seemed right: “I have been lucky to have interfaced with so many wonderful people who have taught me the value and sanctity of life. Everyone has a story to tell if you are prepared to listen.”

Stories, however, are getting bypassed in modern healthcare. With the systematic tendency to measure service in terms of time and time in terms of money, today’s electronic health care record systems force stories into checklists. Listening to stories is harder than filling out checklists. While these tendencies chip away at our ancient profession we can fight the trend. When we make a choice to listen, as Hugh advocates, clinical medicine becomes an art.

Seven. Art & medicine. In 1936 Sir Henry Wellcome’s will established the Wellcome Trust in London to advance medical research and the understanding of its history. If you visit that city the Wellcome Trust is a wonderful place to spend a morning or afternoon perusing its collections and exhibits. An article last year in JAMA by Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust, discussed the role of this organization in the world today. [Farrar. Science, medicine, and society. A view from the Wellcome Trust. JAMA. 313:2315, 2015] The trust expends more than $1 billion dollars yearly in biomedical sciences and biotechnology “interrogating the fundamental processes of life in health and in sickness and using that knowledge to develop ways to promote well-being and to diagnose, treat, or prevent disease.”

Farrar makes the point that while science is essential and wonderful, its implementation in medicine and society is not guaranteed. He references Semmelweis and Snow, who in the mid-nineteenth century provided theory and supporting evidence that certain diseases were transmitted by dirty hands, yet conventional wisdom of the time rejected the idea. Farrar writes: “…their stories reveal that scientific evidence is not enough to improve medicine: social and cultural factors are vital as well… Because the Trust appreciates the importance of the history and social contexts of medicine, it also supports research across the medical humanities, social sciences, and bioethics, as well as funding for artists and educators to engage the public with research.”

We health care professionals revel in science. Scientific ways of thinking have brought us a verifiable understanding of life, health, and illness as well as new technologies to enhance health and mitigate disease. Yet as Farrar tells it, science is not enough. History, social contexts, and values must always frame the science, as well as inspire and deploy it. In the consilience of human knowledge, as EO Wilson explains, science is but one facet of the art of Homo sapiens.

Eight. Chang Lecture on Art & Medicine. In 2007 our Department of Urology began an annual lecture in honor of the family of Dr. Cheng-Yang Chang, an esteemed Nesbit Alumnus who joined our faculty when Urology was a small section of the Surgery Department. Dr. Chang was our first faculty member to focus on pediatric urology. Coincidentally, his father was a highly acclaimed artist in China during its turbulent mid-Twentieth Century years. A number of his paintings are housed in the University of Michigan Art Museum where you can also visit the Shirley Chang Wing, named in honor of Dr. Chang’s late wife. The couple had two sons. Ted Chang, a University of Michigan and Nesbit alumnus like his dad, practices urology in Albany New York. Ted is a first class urologist and educator. Hamilton Chang, a fellow UM man, is an investment banker in Chicago, a leader in Michigan’s alumni organizations and a cornerstone of our urology fundraising efforts.

This year’s Chang Lecture will be given by Don Nakayama, a pediatric surgeon and expert on the Diego Rivera Murals you can find at the Detroit Institute of Art. The Surgery Panel on the upper left hand corner of the south wall has been described by art historians as “brain surgery,” but after personal investigation Don discovered that the art historians were not quite right, anatomically. The actual panel, in fact, depicts an orchiectomy, an operative procedure far more in tune with Rivera’s theme, as a committed socialist, of the emasculated worker. Don discussed this in a paper in The Pharos, [Summer 2014, p. 8].

[Above: south wall. Below: surgery panel]

If you plan to visit the Ann Arbor Art Fairs this July, consider setting aside an hour to join us at the Chang Lecture on Tuesday, July 21 at 5 PM in the UM Hospital Ford Auditorium. You can hear Dr. Nakayama, meet him at a reception after the talk, collect some CME credits if you are a physician, and have your parking ticket stamped. Not a bad deal, I submit.

Nine. The art of humanity extends from the earliest moments of assisting childbirth, caring for lacerations, splinting fractures, counseling sufferers, and painting on cave walls, to today’s robotic surgery and technological entertainments such as the new Star Wars, if you accept the proposition that art is any deliberative human action or construct. This new iteration of Star Wars successfully expands the story of a distant galaxy and the force that binds it. A business school professor at Washington University St. Louis explored the narrative and proposed that an economic force binds the distant galaxy as well, thus brightening the dismal science. [http://arxiv.org/format/1511.09054v1]

The dark side of the dismal science was evident in another current film – The Big Short. I’d read the book by Michael Lewis, who showed in lucid detail how the housing and credit bubble collapse in 2008, known also as the subprime mortgage crisis, was predicted. This catastrophe quickly expanded into a major stall of the world economy, that is still under repair. The astonishing thing is that the prediction was not made by economists, the big banks, the big accounting firms, universities, Nobel Laureates, bond rating companies, regulatory agencies, or “the market” itself. The prediction was made by an oddball physician who analyzed publicly available data and discovered the “obvious” flaw in complex mortgage securities. Astonishingly, none of the experts was so smart and the sad, sad reality is that none of them was doing their job competently. This story begs the question: how can so many smart people be so dumb? It’s an astonishing story and a very cautionary tale of reliance on experts. If course we have to trust experts, but we also have to verify that trust constantly in real time, by listening to diverse and even oddball opinions and insisting upon honest broker regulation and competition.

The physician who figured this out was Michael Burry, a UCLA economics graduate, Vanderbilt MD, and Stanford neurology resident. His main interest, however, was investing and even as a resident had acquired a reputation for success in value investing. He left residency to invest full-time and in November 2000 he started Scion Capital. As Lewis told the story, in the first full year of Scion when the S&P 500 fell 11. 88%, Scion’s fund was up 55%. This was no Bernie Madoff effect, the Scion success was real, verifiable, and durable. Value investing is based on the idea of buying an asset that appears underpriced according to an analysis of some sort. The analysis may recognize some fundamental flaw in the current price of the asset based on historical factors, operational data related to the company, information about its market and competitors, or expectations concerning the future. In some ways this is a complex extension of the thinking of Martín de Azpilcueta. Burry extended the idea by betting against the future value of money through an insurance mechanism called the credit default swap.

Burry was not looking for “a short” rather was actually seeking good long term bets. In 2005, however, his analysis of national lending practices in 2003 and 2004 indicated to him that a subprime mortgage bubble would collapse in 2007. He persuaded Goldman Sachs to sell him credit default swaps against certain subprime deals. The rest is history, as well as excellent cinematography.

[Illustration: Lamro, on Wikipedia, Credit Default Swap. Burry is the blue box, Goldman Sachs is the black box. The par value of the asset was its high value at the time of the credit default deal.]

Ten. March, now that we are a few days into it, has its own stories. March 1 is the meteorological beginning of spring, although that may not be so apparent here in Ann Arbor. March 20/21 is the astronomical beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere or autumn in the Southern. The month is named for the Roman God of War, Mars, who was also the guardian of agriculture. This was an odd conjunction since it is not immediately apparent that the pursuits of war and of agriculture are similar. On the other hand, if you believe that the best defense is a strong offense, the idea makes some sense and in Roman times the month Martius marked a new season of farming and military campaigns. In addition to competence on the land and in battle, legend also ascribed to Mars some competence in the urological sense, as his relationship with the Vestal Virgin, Rhea Silvia, produced twin boys, Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of the city of Rome. Even beyond the reproductive outcome, Mars was generally viewed as a paragon of virility, with no issues of low testosterone. Martius was the start of the Roman yearly calendar until as late as 153 BC. Russia held on to this start date to the end of the 15^th century, and Great Britain and its colonies (even us in America) used March 25 as the beginning of the calendar year until 1752 when the Gregorian calendar was adopted. March is American Red Cross Month.

March 13 marks the shift to Daylight Savings Time. Ben Franklin has been claimed as originator of daylight savings time, but in fact the solid proposal came from George Vernon Hudson who died 70 years ago (5 April 1946). Born in London he moved to New Zealand with his father and became a respected amateur entomologist and astronomer. His daytime job in Wellington as post office clerk gave him time after work to study and collect insects. It was said that this was the impetus for his idea to maximize daylight in winter times. In 1895 he gave a paper at the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a 2-hour daylight savings time shift. Hudson was a member of the 1907 Sub-Antarctic Islands Scientific Expedition. The daylight savings idea was slow to catch on and New Zealand’s Summertime Act wasn’t passed until 1927.

[Left: Hudson in 1907 on expedition. National Library of New Zealand. Right: Willett in 1909, J. Benjamin Stone Collection, Birmingham Central Library.]

Daylight savings occurred later to another Briton, home builder William Willett (1856-1915). Riding his horse one summer morning he observed many household’s blinds still drawn, indicating the inhabitants were still asleep and missing much of the day. He began to advocate for an official way to extend daylight and the British Summer Time became law in 1916, although Willett died just before it went into effect. (Trivia: Willett’s great-great-grandson is Chris Martin of the band Coldplay.) Today, daylight savings time methods are utilized throughout much of the world.

[Wikipedia. Blue – DST used, Orange – formerly used, Red – never used]

If March came in like a lion we hope it exits sheepishly after a bit of collegiate athletic madness. We also will be having a departmental retreat at the end of the month. Before closing out this message, let me return briefly to Ben Franklin, printer, inventor, author, postmaster, diplomat, and urethral catheter expert. In 1752 he designed a flexible silver catheter for his brother John who was suffering from bladder calculi and it is likely that, living to age 84, Ben used it himself.

Thanks for reading What’s New and Matula Thoughts.

David A. Bloom, University of Michigan, Department of Urology

	Nancy Rhodes on Expectations and epistolaries
	dabloom on Expectations and epistolaries
	Nancy Rhodes on Expectations and epistolaries
	John Barry on Politics, as usual?
	dabloom on Expectations and epistolaries