David M Eisenberg

E: One of my most valued mentors, Howard Hiatt, suggested that I identify people with whom I do not share a common professional language but with whom I share important questions. He encouraged me to spend time with these individuals, to build bridges, and suggested that this type of work would result in my greatest professional contribution and personal satisfaction. He has been right.

E: That it will view itself as a separate entity and further marginalise its capacity to inform conventional health care and contribute to scientific discovery and clinical care.

E: Someone who can identify a question that is new and important, and can answer it with the best scientific methods currently available. This usually requires someone with interpersonal as well as methodological skill.

E: I definitely would have been a chef. My siblings and I are the first in four generations not to work in Jewish bakeries. Cooking and food remain passions for me. If I am lucky, I will be able to merge my professional research interest with the field of nutrition and health promotion. I am working on this at the moment.

E: I always wanted to be a doctor. No one in my family was a physician (and for that matter none of my immediate relatives graduated from a liberal arts college or university). Because my father died at age 39 and my three grandparents died within a year of his passing, I was drawn to study medicine, if only to understand these profound losses and how they might be prevented.

E: Some combination of compassion, science and the desire to work across disciplines. At heart, I am a primary care internist who has been fascinated by the question of ‘what works’ as well as how these things work and whether intention, expectation, cultural conditioning, etc., impact the effect size of any medical intervention. This is what drew me to Asia 25 years ago and this remains a deep personal fascination for me. I suppose I am capable of suspending disbelief a bit more than others and, as such, anything that allows us to rigorously evaluate the question of what works and how is of interest to me.

E: Being misunderstood and labelled as either an advocate or sceptic in some unsubstantiated fashion. This has always caused me great pain and probably is unavoidable.

E: My ambition and my fear of failure. However, there is no limit to what one can learn from life experience and good therapy!

E: Arrogance and entitlement are cancers of the soul that frequently get in the way of good work and good relationships.

E: I am not sure. It’s a toss-up between being interviewed for my first lab. job and biting into a cherry tomato, only to see it splatter on a white shirt of my future boss; then again, my first opportunity to appear on national US television was cut short by a commercial without any chance for me to finish my sentence. Both of these were learning experiences. I’m just hoping enlightenment comes soon …

E: My favourite book is As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg, a rabbinical scholar who wrestled with the timeless tension between faith and science. The story is based on an historical reflection of the life of a rabbi who lived in the first century AD. My favourite films are Casablanca and Dr Strangelove. You figure that out.

E: It comes from the author, David Grimes, who wrote an article on the use of technology. He said: ‘Doing everything for everyone is neither tenable nor desirable. What is done should ideally be inspired by compassion and guided by science and not merely reflect what the market will bear’.

E: Chinese and Italian, no question.

E: My mother. She raised four children single-handedly and each is a kind, giving and successful being. No one trumps her accomplishments in my mind.

E: Health concerns regarding loved ones.

E: I don’t think any true virtues are ever overrated.

E: I try to be kind and compassionate to others.

E: The creation of a new academic division at Harvard Medical School. With any luck, this will become a sustainable academic component of the University.

E: I have no idea. Maybe the title of the segment could be ‘Confused Jews from New York who find themselves enmeshed in integrative medicine controversies!’ In any event, I wouldn’t go because I don’t like violence.