That comment raised, at least in my mind, a question that I've been wrestling with over the last several years: Why do we teach what we do?
It is interesting how much my own attitude toward this question has changed over the years. There was a time when I felt that a thorough grounding in basic biological knowledge is absolutely critical to being an adequate physician. This premise, that understanding the basic vocabulary of biology is critical to a physician's education, underlay my attitude toward the basic biomedical curriculum for many years. I was convinced, for instance, that genetic information would have such a major impact on understanding pathology, predicting prognosis, and designing therapy that a thorough grounding in molecular genetics was critical to be a well-informed physician in the 21st century.
It is ironic that even as I thought this, I was not paying heed to the fact that ...
