Dr Topols bad day

Dr. Eric Topol is a cardiologist, author, editor-in-chief of Medscape, and genomics professor. In 2009, he was named one of the 12 Rock Stars of Science by none other than GQ magazine.

But even rock stars occasionally have a bad day. After blogging for almost 5 years, I sometimes have trouble thinking of things to write about. This apparently happened to Dr. Topol the other day. He published a Medscape article with an accompanying video about how doctors are being squeezed by many outside forces that require them to do things they dont want to do.

It was kind of a rambling discourse in which he suggested that doctors should offload the responsibility to do these "more mundane aspects of care" to the patients. He thinks this would make medicine more exciting "the way it used to be."

Dr. Topol offered this cartoon to illustrate the outside forces that are squeezing doctors.

Genomics is a focus of Dr. Topols research, but I dont think a lot of doctors are concerned that they lack knowledge about it.

His post created a lot of controversy prompting Medscape to take down all of the comments.

With great foresight, one physician, Dr. Kristin Held, preserved her comment with a screenshot which I have thoughtfully provided for you below.

What do you think she really wanted to say with the start of her second paragraph? Could it have been "How about growing a _ _ _ _ of _ _ _ _s?

Like Dr. Held, I have no idea which of the "mundane aspects of this new world" Dr. Topol had in mind to offload on the patients. Of the 16 forces squeezing doctors that he illustrated, I dont see many of them being taken over by patients. They already control patient satisfaction and whats written on Yelp. Maybe they can cover the lack of genomic knowledge too.

Its sad that an influential doctor like Topol is so lost in the woods. However, the bright side is that gave me something to write about.

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