So I want to talk with you today about the role of the physician.

And I kind of wrote this with the idea of mine of speaking to physicians,

but I wasn't quite sure what the community was right here in the medical center

applies to everybody in the medical profession,

and all of us who are sooner or later patients.

So what I want to do is talking about, basically about the challenge of medicine,

of biology.

Anybody who has been involved in healthcare over the past 30 years cannot help

to be struck by the dramatic changes in the role of the physician.

Economic pressures, demographic shifts, and new tools and techniques of medical intervention

have all driven fundamental changes which in turn have affected the doctor-patient relationship.

Even as these changes have led to a much

decried loss of sensitivity and personalized care, another more subtle but significant transformation

is underway. Slowly with steadily, the role of the physician as a professional guided by an overarching and enduring ethic is giving way to a new image, one of exchange,

wherein the physician delivers a technical service in response to a demand driven by the patient's desires or perceived needs.

This new relationship is encoded in the very language of our modern medical culture. The doctor and the patient, that's what they were called when I was trained,

the doctor and the patient have now become the health care provider and the client.

And beneath this change, propelled by the powers of our advancing biotechnology,

there is a revision in the meaning of medicine.

The traditional role of medicine has been to cure disease and alleviate suffering, to restore

and sustain the patient to the natural level of functioning.

The medical arts were in the service of a wider reverence and respect for the natural order.

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