In preparation for a career in academic medicine, I worked as a medical house officer at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital from 1966 to 1968 and then joined Ira Pastan's laboratory at the National Institutes of Health as a Clinical Associate.

I had learned that science is a rewarding, active process of discovery, not the passive absorption of what others had discovered.

Anyone graduating from medical school in 1966 had first to fulfill military service before launching a career. Fiercely opposed to the Vietnam War, I sought to avoid it through an assignment to the Public Health Service.

The public schools I attended were dominated by athletics and rarely inspiring intellectually, but I enjoyed a small circle of interesting friends despite my ineptitude at team sports and my preference for reading.

I'm a proponent of single-payer health-care, public education, protecting the environment - all the things Democrats rally around.

The public health ramifications of our scandalous open borders are possibly even more dangerous and far-reaching than the economic and political consequences.

There's a lot of work you have to do before you ever fire the starting gun on a health reform bill - doing the scut work with members of Congress, talking to your allies - to figure out the best plan.

Sin is very important to the soul because sin is what disintegrates the soul; it's what attacks the soul. Sin kind of is to the soul what cancer is to the body.