Chapter 10: Educating the Next Generation and Concerns about the Future of Healthcare
Files
Description
Dr. Leeds explains that now that he comes to MD Anderson only one day a week, he focuses on educating fellows and students. He comments on the high quality of the next generation of physicians and researchers.
Next he explains his concern over the rising cost of medicine and the specter of a single-payer system which, he feels, would not offer quality people the financial incentives to stay in medicine.
Identifier
LeedsNE_02_20170620_C10
Publication Date
6-20-2017
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Overview; Overview; Definitions, Explanations, Translations; Education; On Education; Research; Technology and R&D; Understanding Cancer, the History of Science, Cancer Research; The History of Health Care, Patient Care; Career and Accomplishments; Post Retirement Activities; Dedication to MD Anderson, to Patients, to Faculty/Staff; The Business of MD Anderson; The Institution and Finances
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D.:
Sure, sure, yeah. Would you like to talk more about your research, so we can bring that part of the story to a close?
Norman Leeds, MD:
I’m done. T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. You’re done?
Norman Leeds, MD:
Yes. I’ve told you all the things... I can’t—didn’t... T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. No more research? What—you aren’t working on anything right now?
Norman Leeds, MD:
I’m right now—right now I’m just working on advanced brain tumor imaging, so, you know— T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. And what does that mean, exactly?
Norman Leeds, MD:
That means using the advanced techniques, physiologic techniques, to better define tumor grade and tumor location and kind of tumor, why do we suspect it is. And learning more and more. T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. What do you think is sort of the next big phase for neuroradiology?
Norman Leeds, MD:
I don’t know. T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. Yeah, really?
Norman Leeds, MD:
No, it’s going to be some development in equipment, in either MR or... You know, there are several new techniques that are sitting there, waiting. T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. What are those techniques?
Norman Leeds, MD:
Well, they’re using temperature, and using other means with MR, and possibly even newer magnets, just like newer computers are possible. Advanced computing. Who knows? I am not going to be part of that, because I’m just now—my main goal right now is education. I’m working to educate the newer generation to be as good as they can be, to advance diagnosis, and education, and stimulate them to do work on research. But I’ve done my fill. But I’m enjoying it, so I think this is the other benefit, I think, is that I’ve enjoyed it so much that I like passing on the knowledge to the next generation, hopefully to make it better, smarter, and more advantageous to the patient. T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. What do you think of the—how has the quality of students or fellows shifted? Or what’s—how are they different?
Norman Leeds, MD:
I don’t think they are. I think people are people. I mean, I think the people I trained with are very good, and through the years I think they’re smarter, kids are smarter now. I mean, I see what they learn in school. My daughter was learning things, you know, about drugs and the brain in high school that I didn’t learn until medical school. So the kids are really smarter, and, I expect, better trained, because of us and all the... You know, knowledge builds. Hopefully bad knowledge gets discarded, but there are occasionally bad things. But I think children are smarter, and they’re growing smarter. And I think that’s the advantage. So I think it will get better, because... The only thing I worry about is the single-party payer and the cost of medicine. I mean, to go to medical school is very expensive. If there’s a single-party payer, the salaries will decrease, the number interested will decrease, and eventually the thing that’s going to be sold is nobody’s going to want to go into medicine. Look, in Europe they do what they—they don’t pay to go to medical school. Nobody pays. Do you realize what we earned? I earned $80 a month as an intern and didn’t get food. Eighty dollars a month. And I worked long hours. I’m really glad that they cut the hours. I once worked Friday, Saturday, till Sunday—I mean, no, I should say Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning. I didn’t get home until five o’clock. T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. Is this as a resident or intern?
Norman Leeds, MD:
As an intern. T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. As an intern.
Norman Leeds, MD:
Five o’clock. So I had worked 48, almost 53 hours. And I didn’t think that was right. But, you know, you’re an intern. No one pays any attention. So I think... But it worries me, because I think if medicine comes like the traffic, like getting a license, which is what... You’re talking about the VA system, where—right? What’s going to—what is the VA system? A one-payer system. What’s going to happen when the government... And I think eventually it’s going to happen, because—I don’t care whether it’s Republican—because people think everybody deserves medical care. So once you come to that conclusion, which is correct, there’s only one fallacy: if you don’t have enough to eat, that’s a significant... Nobody believes in free food, but they believe in free medical care. Well, you know, there is no free lunch. You know it as well as I know it, and if... Somebody has to pay. And if you make the physician pay, which means he makes less, then what’s going to happen to medicine? I mean, it’s not that MD Anderson or any of these places are going to disappear; it’s that the quality will diminish. A lot of people go into medicine, as my son said when he was at Columbia College—the kids were going, he said, because they earn—they expected to earn more money. But it’s going to come that that’s not going to happen. Then they’re not going to come running. And then the quality will go down, because the top people are going to go where the dollar is. T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. Where the dollar is, sure, sure.
Norman Leeds, MD:
You know that. I mean, that’s... I mean, you—I mean, no, people are—good people are going to go into things. They still do. I mean, the social studies would have disappeared if we went on just dollar. But, again, it’s an inhibition. And I think one of the qualities in medicine has been the number of people and the quality of the people. You know, it’s not easy to get into college, good colleges now, and it’s harder to get into medical school. Well, what’s going to happen...? I told you that when I went, we were inundated, because I had the people going, plus the people who had been delayed because of the being in the war and so forth. So there were so many... They’re still hard to get into medical school. So I don’t know what’s... But when they do this, and—which is what is happening—I think then the quality will change. T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. Let me ask you—I mean, you’ve talked about these kind of big changes, you know, in the marketplace, and in kind of attitudes about medicine. What are some changes that you’ve seen at MD Anderson since the early ’90s, when you arrived? How would you comment on that?
Norman Leeds, MD:
I... Just that it keeps getting better, I think. Unfortunately, some good people leave, which you feel their absence. And the leadership is critical. They need a healing for the faculty. I never had that problem because I was always happy with what I did, but it did impact me—and I will tell you this—I told my kids not to go to medical school. T.A. Rosolowski, Ph.D. Really?
Norman Leeds, MD:
Well, because I saw the beginnings of this happening, and I wondered when we would get socialized, or one-party medicine. And I felt it would be—I didn’t know—actually, from what I see, it wouldn’t have impacted them. But I didn’t know. I just saw it happening with the cost of medicine going up, and I thought with the thinking that medicine is for everybody, and there is no free lunch. I mean, Bernie Sanders said, yeah, it could start as a free lunch, but eventually somebody has to pay for it. And who’s going to go into medicine?
Recommended Citation
Leeds, Norman MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 10: Educating the Next Generation and Concerns about the Future of Healthcare" (2017). Interview Chapters. 1310.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1310
Conditions Governing Access
Open
