Virtue and Good Medicine | John Rhee, MD, MPH

There is something uniquely haunting about many neurological diseases. These conditions often don't only affect the body — they reshape the very foundation of who we are, our memories, our personalities, our language. When the brain begins to fail, the boundary between illness and identity start to blur; the person we know begins to fade even before their life has ended. 

In this episode, we are joined by John Rhee, MD, MPH, a neuro-oncologist and palliative care physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, whose work sits at the intersection of science, suffering, and the soul. He cares for patients with brain tumors and neurodegenerative diseases, conditions that challenge our deepest assumptions about selfhood, dignity, and what it means to live a meaningful life. Dr. Rhee is also the co-founder and executive director of The Hippocratic Society, a community of clinicians that aims to cultivate virtues that characterize good medical practitioners and ideals that make medicine a sacred profession. 

Over the course of our conversation, we talk about suffering — not just physical pain, but the existential kind. We explore how the brain anchors our identity, how its decline confronts us with profound questions, how medical education can improve by training doctors to be more reflective in their work, why an element of spirituality remains critical to medicine, what it means to accompany someone through decline, and more.

In this episode, you’ll hear about: 

3:00 - Dr. Rhee‘s path to medicine

6:30 - The general scope of focus for a neuro-oncologist 

16:07 - Understanding the brain from both medical and existential perspectives 

26:36 - The mission of The Hippocratic Society

40:45 - Why “virtue” is central to the focus of The Hippocratic Society 

49:34 - How to get involved with The Hippocratic Society

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