Word: publicize
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years ago, a sick man who consulted his physician had roughly a fifty-fifty chance of benefiting from the encounter. The doctor's cheery manner and solicitous style were compensation for the uncertainty of a cure. "Medicine originally was mainly talk," says Sidney Wolfe, a physician who directs the Public Citizen Health Research Group in Washington, "and very little effective diagnosis and treatment...
...well and with less to fear from diseases that ravaged whole generations. Life expectancy has jumped during this century from 47 to 75 years. And yet the physicians, victims of their own success, are finding that however swift the advance of medical knowledge, it is still outpaced by public expectations. "The public thinks that all diseases should be treatable, all disabilities reparable," observes John Stoeckle, chief of the medical clinics at Massachusetts General Hospital. "And there should be no pain and suffering...
...naturally, the public is far from content. In part the problem lies with the failure of the profession and the government to police medicine adequately, since the stakes could not be higher. If a stockbroker is incompetent, his client may lose his savings; if a doctor is negligent, his patient may lose his vision, his memory, his mobility or his life. Though the public, the government and the physicians themselves have become more vigilant, the persistent stories of medical mishaps continue to take their toll on patient confidence...
...anger and suspicion toward doctors are easy to measure, even without reading the tabloids or watching Geraldo for the latest tally of medical misdeeds. When the American Medical Association conducts surveys of public attitudes toward physicians, it finds a troubling loss of faith. Even people who esteem their own physicians often deride the profession as a whole. In 1987, 37% of those polled did not believe doctors take a genuine interest in their patients. Only 45% believed doctors "usually explain things well to their patients...
...FIXING A SHADOW: 150 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHY, National Gallery, Washington. The history of photography as art, assembled from public and private collections around the world. More than 400 original pictures representing 200 photographers. Among them: Louis Daguerre, Alfred Stieglitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. Through July...