Leonard Zwelling

It does seem to be an issue that arose out of nowhere, but it isn’t. It’s been around for centuries, just never really dealt with in the political arena. The issue is that of transgender people. We’ll take the broad view and say transgender people are those whose gender does not match with their sex. Transgender people are not homosexual, by definition, but, of course, can be. This is different and it is also under attack. Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama just signed into law legislation that prevents these young people from seeking and receiving gender-affirming medical treatment. This is on top of similar legislation around the country where Republican state legislatures seek to narrow the focus of acceptable human gender identity at the precise time when that fluidity is finally being accepted by many. This is most unfortunate.

A long time ago, there was a town surrounding a castle that was surrounded by a moat and high walls. The lord mayor of the town lived in the castle. A few thousand people lived in the town that was ruled by that local lord mayor who was appointed by the king of the country.

The main income of the town was generated by fifty or so highly skilled craftsmen who worked in wood, silver, gold and leather. The rest of the people in the town were small farmers, herders or aids to the craftsmen. Some of the helpers were actually apprentices learning a craft, but many were not. The apprentices would spend some years with the expert craftsmen and then either set up their own shop or move to another near-by town to do so.

Peggy Noonan makes a great point in her op-ed on The Wall Street Journal web site on March 31. The 1960 Presidential election was among the closest in history, far closer than the ones in 2016 and 2020 and more like 2000. The candidates were separated by about 100,000 votes out of over 60 million cast. Many think, as she points out, that it was ballot mischief in Chicago and Texas that gave JFK the electoral victory the morning after.

Recently I noted that there have only been five presidents in MD Anderson’s long history and that the three earliest—Clark, LeMaistre, and Mendelsohn, each had long tenures in office. For the past ten years, the same is not the case. DePinho was a real short-termer for an MD Anderson leader and Pisters has yet to declare himself to be on a plane with his three earliest predecessors. In other words, it is too soon to say whether the historical norm of long-lived MD Anderson presidencies has vanished or is being re-established.

On the website of The New York Times on April 1, veteran Supreme Court and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Linda Greenhouse makes the case for why the latest Supreme Court hearings were such a disgrace.

The Republican minority led by Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn and Josh Hawley made complete fools of themselves by focusing on Judge Jackson’s middle of the road record in child pornography cases and what the judge’s definition of a “woman” is instead of trying to assess her qualifications for the job, which are unquestionable. This is far more than I can say about current Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh.

Today, the North Carolina Tar Heels did what they did to Coach K in an early game against him at the start of his career at Duke. They beat the Duke Blue Devils.

In an amazingly close back and forth battle (18 lead changes) in New Orleans, UNC prevailed 81-77 by hitting a key three-point shot at the end of regulation while Duke missed some equally critical free throws down the stretch.

A couple of important notes first.

Coach Mike Krzyzewski is the winningest coach in the history of college basketball. He’s won more NCAA tournament games than anyone else. He’s won five national championships and been to 13 Final Fours. He’s also won three Olympic gold medals as a coach.

Finally.

President Biden actually said what no one else would say. Vladimir Putin cannot stay as the head of Russia if he insists on butchering a neighbor in Ukraine. Not only that, Biden wouldn’t walk it back at a press conference on March 28 when the rest of NATO is a little skittish at Biden’s call for regime change. Good for Biden. It’s about time someone manned up.

  It should come as no surprise that The New York Times calls for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign while The Wall Street Journal makes little of the texts from Justice Thomas’ wife Ginni to Mark Meadows, then President Trump’s chief of staff, about how Mr. Meadows must make sure that Mr. Trump does not concede defeat after the November 2020 elections. This becomes a bit important because Justice Thomas was the only dissenting vote on the Supreme Court when it determined that the Trump White House could not block the release of records concerning January 6. The issue addressed by both editorials is whether or not Justice Thomas is in an irreconcilable conflict of interest because of his wife’s highly partisan political activities. Should Justice Thomas recuse himself from all matters concerning January 6 and the Trump White House? Should he, in fact, resign because of the undue influence of his very partisan wife?

      This is a tough one and one that I had to struggle with myself once.

If I understand President Putin’s argument for all this invading he is doing it is to reconstitute the true Russia. We in the west call that the Soviet Union plus the Warsaw Pact countries, but Putin may have different notions of what “Russia” ought to look like. The problem is that those other countries like Ukraine, no longer want to be part of Russia, if they ever did. They see themselves as independent, sovereign entities with no wish at all to be realigned with Putin’s Russia. In other words, Putin looks at all of this land mass, that in the current Russia and that in what used to be the Soviet Union, as one Russia. He views this one Russia as the bulwark against western aggression, but these independent countries want to be part of NATO and the European Union, and more importantly the populations of the countries want that, too. They want freedom, autonomy and self-determination. Putin wants them to heel to his desires and cow to his weapons. The Ukrainians have basically said no to that and look like they will fight to the death to prevent there from becoming one greater Russia again.

In this op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on February 23 by Harvard senior Julie Hartman, she complains that most of her classmates have followed the Covid restrictions imposed by Harvard like obedient sheep whether or not those rules made sense. She bemoans the behavior of her classmates and attributes it to their life long striving to get ahead by being good boys and girls, padding their resumes, and striving for the next credential to make the next step up the ladder. In high school, it was to get to Harvard. At Harvard it was to get into the best graduate school or best Wall Street firm.

Most of us in academic medicine live lives like that—going from gold star to gold star, from grades to SATs, to the best universities and the best academic job where we compete for grants, papers, lab space and glory. I should know. That was me.