Medical Schools

Ask a young child what he or she wants to grow up to be, and the response you'll get as often as any other is "I want to be a doctor." As they grow older, most children discover other interests and career goals, and "playing doctor" is just a childhood memory. But for some, the fascination never goes away, and they plan all the way through school to pursue medicine seriously. Unfortunately, many of these would-be doctors know little about the what it takes to capture that prized medical degree.

His wife was a patient at the clinic where I worked in my early days as a doctor. I saw her regularly for hypertension. But on one visit, she was more concerned about her husband - let's call him Pedro. He was having stomach pains and difficulty swallowing. I told her to make an appointment for him with me. When I saw him, Pedro explained that he had lost weight and was having trouble swallowing solid food. A barium swallow study confirmed my fears: He had esophageal cancer. Another doctor at the clinic received the report before I saw Pedro again and made an urgent referral to surgery.

Wyoming has a shortage of doctors and no medical school. So Ross University, a for-profit medical school on the Caribbean island of Dominica, thought it had found a perfect place for a new campus far from the tropics. The university's 80-year-old founder, Robert Ross, proposed to spend $25 million on opening a medical school just outside Casper and announced plans to start classes next spring.

While USC conducted a nationwide search for a dean for its school of medicine, Dr. Stephen J. Ryan stepped in as interim dean in 1991, expecting to serve for six months. He held the job a record 13 years. During his tenure as dean, it became known as the Keck School of Medicine of USC after the W.M. Keck Foundation donated $110 million to the institution, then the largest gift ever given to a medical school. Ryan was credited with raising the school's national profile, getting state-of-the-art facilities built, and expanding the level and quality of sponsored research.

A call for change is afoot in the difficult and often heartbreaking world of addiction treatment. For decades, 12-step programs and a medication-free approach have dominated the recovery industry. But now doctors and scientists and the leader of the National Institute on Drug Abuse are pushing for broad recognition of addiction as a disease and more medical approaches to therapy. In the last couple of years, a top addiction society officially declared addiction a "brain disorder.

The California Board of Medical Quality Assurance is to be commended for what appears on the surface as its intention to maintain high standards of medicine by studying foreign medical schools in order to establish "equivalency" in education (Part I, Dec. 11). However, I regret the implications the article may have unleashed. To set the record straight: There is undeniably a critical lag in health technology in the Philippines. This goes hand in hand with the long-standing economic predicament of the country.

It certainly would be good for UC Riverside if it had a full medical school. Professional schools - especially medical and law schools - add luster to a college's reputation and can attract research money and elite professors. Whether it would be good for the state, or for the University of California as a whole, is another matter. Though we don't object to the concept of increasing the number of such graduate schools, this seems like the wrong time to embark on an expensive new project that will cost the state millions of dollars a year down the road.

JERUSALEM — Israeli medical student Mohammad Hijazi seems the ideal candidate to alleviate the country's looming doctor shortage. He graduated first in his high school class, scored in the top 5% of Israel's version of the SAT and rounded out his resume by founding a grass-roots organization that encourages blood donation. Yet for the four years he applied to all five of Israel's medical schools, Hijazi was repeatedly rejected. Officials told him he kept failing the pre-admission personality interview, but the 25-year-old Arab Israeli suspects another reason: He believes that recent changes in the enrollment process are designed to discourage non-Jewish applicants.

Medical schools are reporting a decline in applications for the first time in nearly a decade, and the reasons cited include an 11% drop in minority applicants, managed care and the booming economy. After a decade of robust growth in applications, the number of students applying for the fall of 1997 incoming class dropped 8.4% from the previous year, when a record 46,968 people competed for 16,000 first-year slots.

The number of applicants to the nation's medical schools has fallen for the sixth straight year, according to a new study -- a trend that baffles researchers. In 2002, about 22% fewer medical school applications were filed than in 1997, according to the report published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. That translates to a drop of about 9,500 applications. Dr. Barbara Barzansky, a co-author of the study, can't explain the drop-off.

Herbalife International says it's all about helping people "pursue healthy, active lives. " UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine likes to think of itself as being in the forefront of medical research and modern healthcare. But the curious relationship between these two supposed champions of healthful living should turn your stomach. Herbalife is the Los Angeles nutritional supplement firm that has become the centerpiece of a ferocious Wall Street tug of war. The major player is hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who contends that Herbalife is a scam to sell overpriced products by fooling people into becoming Herbalife "distributors" by implying the business will make them rich.

During the first half of the 20th century, pediatricians generally believed that children's eye problems were largely self-corrective - that a child would grow out of his or her crossed eyes or poor vision. But they were wrong. Unless a vision problem is detected and corrected early, the child will have vision problems in that eye for the rest of his or her life. Subsequent studies have shown that 2% to 5% of preschool children have vision problems, many of them not apparent. In the late 1940s, a small group of physicians began to recognize this problem.

Re "Not a good fit?," Jan. 10 On the same day a study showed Americans are the least healthy among citizens of wealthy countries, there is a front-page article about residents of Santa Monica complaining that too many people are exercising on public land at Palisades Park. That's more than a little ironic. Lack of physical activity is one of the main drivers of poor health in this country, and you would think everyone would be in favor of more people exercising. This is just an example of the unexpected challenges faced when trying to help people be healthier.

Re "Progress paved by prize money," Column One, Jan. 11 Although I applaud Gary Michelson's efforts to curb the unwanted pet population through a sterilization drug that has yet to be invented, I couldn't help but wonder if that money would be better spent in fighting for legislation to end animal testing and the torture of dogs in medical schools and by pharmaceutical companies. Though both these scenarios are truly unsettling, it is more humane for an animal to be euthanized at a local shelter than to be slowly mutilated over 13 weeks with no pain relief for science's sake, as described in the article.

SAN FRANCISCO - Two UC campuses received important endorsements Thursday for long-stalled projects: a new medical school at Riverside and a major classroom building at Merced. The UC regents included a proposed $15 million to help run the medical school and $45 million for the Merced building in their 2013-14 budget request to the governor and Legislature. The regents said they were more optimistic than in the past about their chances since state tax revenues are improving. Meanwhile, about 60 student protesters - demanding that any new UC revenue be used to freeze tuition or roll it back - blocked an intersection for several hours near the UC San Francisco facility where the regents were meeting.

A national accrediting agency has approved UC Riverside's long-embattled plan to open a full medical school and to start enrolling future doctors next summer, officials announced Tuesday. It would be the sixth medical school in the University of California system and the first to open since the late 1960s. Last year, the same panel rejected the proposal because it looked too risky after the state refused to fund the school. But UC Riverside officials have since secured enough other public and private financing for a program that they say will help ease a doctor shortage in the Inland Empire and improve public healthcare there.

The UC Irvine medical school has been buffeted by a series of scandals in the last four years. Now an outside panel has pointed the way to avoid more problems. The suggestions are full of common sense. As previous examinations of the school have noted, the faculty is first-rate and the research cutting edge. That's all the more remarkable considering that the school was only established three decades ago. It's not a longtime establishment pillar acting as a magnet for top-flight researchers.

The proportion of women in schools for health professions has skyrocketed in recent years, a federal statistical analysis showed Tuesday. In dental schools, women made up only 1% of enrollment in the 1971-72 school term. By 1985-86, the figure was 25%. Women in medical schools jumped to 33% from 11% over the same period, and in pharmacy schools they rose to 56% from 24%.

A call for change is afoot in the difficult and often heartbreaking world of addiction treatment. For decades, 12-step programs and a medication-free approach have dominated the recovery industry. But now doctors and scientists and the leader of the National Institute on Drug Abuse are pushing for broad recognition of addiction as a disease and more medical approaches to therapy. In the last couple of years, a top addiction society officially declared addiction a "brain disorder.

Re "A medical school? Not now," Editorial, July 19 The Times fails to recognize the severe physician shortage in inland Southern California that UC Riverside's new medical school will address. The assertion that there are not enough doctors here because poor people can't afford medical care is just plain wrong. Our community-based medical school is designed expressly to meet the healthcare needs of this region. Our innovative approach will save the state millions in healthcare costs among the underserved.