The case of the month is an actual patient of The Turek Clinic His head was topped with bobbing red hair and his face full of freckles. Thin as a beanpole, he spoke softly as if trying to control his cracking pubertal voice. All in, he appeared to be the stuff that teenage boys are...Continue reading
Category: Fertility
A Tale of Three Testicles
Its funny what people think about every day. Some decide exactly where to paint the lines in our streets. Others, called Gumbusters, remove gum stuck to park benches. Jelly Doughnut Fillers do precisely that, and Golf Ball Divers find stray golf balls that land underwater. And what would casinos do without certified Dice Inspectors? Better...Continue reading
Getting Out of the Fast Lane
The eggs didn’t fertilize. No sperm was found. The embryos fell apart in the dish. The pregnancy test was negative, again. To boot, you’re out of money and utterly and totally exhausted. Your mind is an empty room on a cold, gray day, filled only by the scattered noise of rustling leaves outside. And now...Continue reading
Making Mapping Matter
She approached the microphone slowly from the back of the room, appearing to float, wrapped in her colorful hijab. A doctor from Pakistan, she had some questions and a comment after hearing my talk. A Kind Interrogation “Your Sperm Mapping technique for azoospermic men” she stated softly, “is it done under just local anesthesia?” “Yes,” I responded....Continue reading
MicroTESE vs. FNA Mapping: Medieval or Modern?
Put two experts in a room and give each of them the same problem to solve. What you’ll find is that they typically use similar “knowledge structures” and “heuristic strategies” (i.e. organized and principled thinking) and then proceed to break the problem into smaller, more digestible ones to solve it. But, despite similar cognitive approaches, the solutions...Continue reading
Care = Knowledge + Gut = Babies
There is a lot of “information” out there nowadays. It all started way back when we humans started talking. Then came the written word, and then television, and now it’s the world-wide-web, that great wellspring of all things knowable. Thomas Jefferson considered information the “currency of democracy,” and Ronald Reagan termed it the “oxygen of the...Continue reading
Fact, Theory and Truth in Science
I am giving a talk to a large gathering of Kaiser docs from Southern California this week on whether a relationship exists between male infertility and the later development of cancer. We have published some of the most convincing data to date to suggest that they are linked. But is it really, absolutely true? What is...Continue reading
Prostate Cancer Detection and Diagnosis: Where Are We Now?
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in American men after skin cancer. In 2015 alone, there will be an estimated 220,800 new cases of prostate cancer, with a new case occurring every 2.4 minutes.[1] Prostate cancer can be a serious disease, but a majority of men diagnosed don’t actually die from prostate cancer,...
Are We Less Fertile Today?
How big was your family a couple of generations ago? Dial things back a half a century and you’d see that having 3 or 4 kids was pretty much average in America. Now, having 2 kids or fewer is the norm. What happened? Are we less fertile? I know what you’re thinking: so what if modern...Continue reading
Am I Enough?
The case of the month is an actual patient of The Turek Clinic. He hailed from the Middle East. He cut a striking figure, in a Laurence Olivier kind of way. As a young doctor in his final years of training as a heart surgeon, he had issues with his “stuff.” Quite a few. Six...Continue reading