Larrian Gillespie

After office hours one Friday, Denver neurosurgeon Kenneth P. Burres piled his examination table, waiting room furniture and some medical records onto a truck and set out for California--abandoning his practice. It was 1987, and he was fleeing a host of problems: a medical board investigation of malpractice suits against him, and financial and marital woes. He slipped out of town without warning his physician partner, his staff or his patients, according to Colorado medical board records.

After office hours one Friday, Denver neurosurgeon Kenneth P. Burres piled his examination table, waiting room furniture and some medical records onto a truck and set out for California--abandoning his practice. It was 1987, and he was fleeing a host of problems: a medical board investigation of malpractice suits against him, and financial and marital woes. He slipped out of town without warning his physician partner, his staff or his patients, according to Colorado medical board records.

The Medical Board of California licenses physicians and other medical professionals. It also investigates medical complaints and issues disciplinary actions. The most serious penalties include license revocation, suspension and probation. These are the Los Angeles County physicians and surgeons subject to serious disciplinary actions between Nov. 1, 1996, and Jan. 31, 1997, according to Medical Board documents. Generally, final actions are published only after all appeals are exhausted.

Some of the most moving cities in the world are cities of the dead, worth a traveler's time for their art and history and the respite they provide as islands of green in the middle of strident modern cities of the living. I think fondly of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, on a hill overlooking Concord, Mass., with the graves of Louisa May Alcott and Henry David Thoreau; the atmospheric above-ground graveyards of New Orleans, such as St.

Ever since they made a marketing blunder of Edsel magnitude, it hasn't been easy for the makers of Coca-Cola. Now, as if the company didn't already have enough problems with the ill-fated new formula for its flagship soft drink, researchers at no less than Harvard Medical School find New Coke fails in yet another respect--sperm-killing ability when used (foolishly) as a contraceptive douche.

It can be agonizingly painful and embarrassing, jeopardizing careers, relationships, even sleep. Though once considered a rare disease, 90,000 Americans--mostly women--suffer from it. And some say the number may be as high as 500,000. Obtaining a diagnosis can prove frustrating, taking an average of 4 1/2 years, five doctors and a significant psychological toll.

New evidence has emerged to validate the link--tenuous until now--between the diaphragm and urinary tract infections in women. It isn't clear whether a different diaphragm design would help or even how the diaphragm happens to make it easier for urinary tract infections to occur. But a team of researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle has added new confirmation to conclusions by a Los Angeles urologist first published about three years ago that initially made the link.

Many of the patients were desperate. By the time they arrived at the dowdy little hospital in San Bernardino County, they had lived for years with excruciating pelvic and bladder pain. Doctors repeatedly had told them there was no known cause or cure. Most were women, who said their lives were being ruined by two baffling disorders--interstitial cystitis and vulvodynia.