Adventures from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Have you ever had one of those days when everything and anything goes wrong? Your car won’t start; your roommate used the last of the milk; there is no hot water in your building and, of course, it is pouring outside. Well, in the life of a graduate student, those types of days can start(...)
If you’re planning to apply to Ph.D. programs this fall, hopefully you’ve — at the very least — thought about starting to write a personal statement. For many students this is one of the most daunting aspects of the application process; however, having a strong personal statement can really set you apart amid a thick(...)
The term “doctor” can be traced to its Latin root, docēre, which means “to teach.” And indeed, teaching is ubiquitous in medicine; the residency system that trains physicians is grounded in intensive teaching and learning. Moreover, educating patients about their conditions is a primary objective for every doctor. But five years ago, I was involved(...)
Basic biology tells us that in humans and other mammals, embryos with two X chromosomes develop as females, whereas embryos with one X and one Y chromosome develop as males. If only it were that simple. As it turns out, genetic makeup doesn’t fully determine which sexual organs will develop in utero. Every developing embryo,(...)
When scientists and clinicians hear the words “clinical trial”, we may think of hope, discovery, and a new chance at life. But for racial and ethnic minorities, these words may not have the same positive connotation but may rather be associated with inaccessibility, fear, and exclusion. The potential benefits for patients who participate in clinical(...)
I have people contacting me from all over the country. A pastor called me after an interview I had with CBS and told me, "you still look, talk, and smell like a convict." Wow. What does a “convict” smell like? He continued, "You need Jesus in your life. Back in my day, people were ashamed(...)
“...23,000 deaths a year.” “...over 2 million infections.” These headlines would be alarming but expected if they were descriptions of the latest Ebola outbreak. But alas, these are “conservative, minimum estimates” of antibiotic-resistant infections each year in the United States, as projected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Dangers of Antibiotic Resistance Antibiotics(...)
For the first time ever, scientists in the United States have performed gene editing experiments using CRISPR-Cas9 in humans. CRISPR-Cas9 is a bacterial DNA editing system that researchers have harnessed to change the specific sequence of DNA, with precision down to a single letter of the DNA code. Many pilot studies have been done in(...)
New therapies to treat metastatic breast cancer may lie within one of the most commonly used agents in health care across the world: antibiotics. Sonal Chaudhari, a second-year medical student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, recently spent her summer working under Richard Jones, director of the Bone Marrow Transplant Program, co-director of the(...)
When we think about the great research and scientific breakthroughs that come out of Johns Hopkins, we often focus on the principal investigators and members of their labs. But there is another very strong force of progress at Johns Hopkins that flies under the radar — the core facilities. Johns Hopkins boasts a large array(...)