Why our ways parted

The errors of our ways.

Two articles in this issue of Clinical Chemistry provide additional evidence of the potential benefits of applying modern quality theory to clinical medicine. Though understandably focused on laboratory process, these papers nevertheless suggest lessons that are widely applicable to reducing error rates and improving quality of care throughout medical practice. The manuscripts complement each o...

Our Call: Find Ways to Increase Access.

Can we change our predatory ways?

As a top predator using rifles and harpoons, humans are shaping ecosystems ina unique way, often killing the wrong animals for the wrong reasons. Considering the ongoing crises of mass extinction and climate change, which is boosted by meat farming, we should employ our species-defining intelligence to reinvent our ecological role and learn to savour alternatives to meat.

Enhancing our understanding of ways to analyze metagenomes

Metagenomics is a relatively new field that applies modern genomics techniques to study communities of microbial organisms directly in their natural environments (Chen and Pachter, 2005; Tringe et al., 2005). In this way, it avoids the need for isolation and lab cultivation of individual species that provided a major obstacle of cultivation-based methods. For this reason, the field offers enorm...

Why Our Patients Like Daily Hemodialysis.

The option of daily hemodialysis (HD) was discussed in November 1998 with a group of 35 HD patients on home or self-care/limited-care HD in a single, freestanding unit. After the meeting, 3 patients on home HD chose to switch to daily HD. The clinical success of the first patient and the immediate followers was one of the main reasons for further extension of this experience. At the time of thi...