Praise for Making the Cut
When the courage and integrity of many in the medical community were put to the test, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty passed with flying colors. That so many others failed, reveals that there are broad and deep deficiencies in the culture of medical practice and medical education. In a great many crucial respects, medicine today is in need of healing. In Making the Cut, Dr. Kheriaty provides not only diagnosis but also prescription. It is essential reading for anyone interested in how to heal modern medicine. Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and former member of the Presidents Council on Bioethics
How is the practice of medicine going to recover from the disaster of 2020 and following? To answer that question comes Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, one of the great heroes of the pandemic period. He reflects on his own early training and growing ambivalence toward professional orthodoxies. His doubts boiled over with the pandemic response that misdiagnosed the disease and cure at multiple levels. Trust has taken a huge hit. The profession must adapt. Dr. Kheriatys book is a fantastic guide to the healing both we and the practice of medicine desperately need. Jeffrey Tucker, Founding President of the Brownstone Institute
This highly readable book is, in part, an account of how and why Aaron Kheriaty survived the rigors of medical schoolhow he made the cut and became a physician, and why he is grateful for what he regards as the enormous privilege of that calling. But it is also an account of how and why the profession of medicine needs to make the cutneeds, that is, to cut through its enslavement to the managerial and highly centralized approaches that have come to dominate the physicians art. Readers who are drawn in by the first of these, by the personal stories, will in the end find themselves invited to ponder how our approach to medical caregiving might be altered for the better. In the process they may become wiser patients. Gilbert Meilaender, Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University
In the tradition of such medical chronicles as Intern and House of God, Dr. Kheriaty records his progression from medical student to a full-fledged attending physician by reflecting on the patients he cared for, and who taught him in turn. This outsider, not-quite-orthodox medical student evolves into a questioning physicianand questions abound. Both affectionate critique and pointed criticism from a self-professed reluctant romantic in love with flawed patients and his flawed profession, he looks at his profession as he would a patient and determines that it is sick indeed. This book is his prescription for a cure. G. Kevin Donovan, MD, MA, Clinical Professor Emeritus and Director of the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University
Aaron Kheriaty has written a modern classic. Making the Cut is a captivating memoir cum profound meditation on what ails modern medicineand how to heal it. Beautifully written, it should be required reading for all doctors and medical students, and really for anyone who cares about the health of our nation and our nations health. Ryan T. Anderson, PhD, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center
If contemporary medicine has any chance of preserving itself as a coherent practice, the reforms for which Dr. Kheriaty argues here will be at the center of the game plan. Happily, readers will find a book unburdened by dry, hyper-academic, and white-papery prosebut will instead encounter a sophisticated, evidence-based proposal interwoven with and undergirded by Kheriatys own engrossing story. I cannot wait to use this book in the classroom. Charles Camosy, bioethicist and author of Too Expensive to Treat?: Finitude, Tragedy, and the Neonatal ICU
In Making the Cut, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty offers a luminous and unflinchingly candid memoir that traces the inner contours of medical formation with intellectual rigor and moral clarity. Through richly textured narrative and incisive reflection, he illuminates the ethical complexities, existential inquiries, and quiet crucibles that define the making of a physician. This is a rare workat once literary and philosophicalthat not only bears witness to the hidden struggles and redemptive moments of medical training but also reorients the reader toward the telos of good medicine: the integral flourishing of both patient and healer. Keri O. Brenner, MD, MPA, Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University
Everyone knows that navigating the American healthcare system has become a costly nightmare. Perverse incentives mean doctors and hospitals prioritize quick fixes over helping patients achieve long-term health. Fortunately, some doctors are, well, sick of this state of affairs, and Aaron Kheriatys Making the Cut provides a refreshingly humanist dissection of all thats gone wrong, one that seamlessly blends his captivating personal experience as a doctor with eye-opening facts and policy analysis. In the end, Kheriaty demonstrates to readers hes exactly what our health system needs more ofa doctor you can trust. Mollie Hemingway, Editor in Chief of The Federalist
