William R. Brody, a longtime supporter of CIM, had just begun his 13-year tenure as president of Johns Hopkins University (1996–2009) when he decided to teach an Intersession course for undergraduates.
“I had the feeling that students were getting great at solving problems where the answer is known, but were challenged to think critically about problems that have never been posed,” he says. His remedy? A seminar titled Uncommon Sense, which he would go on to teach to an eager student audience (one year the waiting list topped 500 for 20 spots). It was, he says, “a crash course in outside-the-box thinking,” with insights on “what separates the visionary who takes a risk and does amazing things from the regular person who clings to safety and merely gets by.”
As a biomedical engineer and successful entrepreneur who had co-founded several medical device companies and helped pioneer heart transplantation, Brody certainly had ample wisdom to share. That wisdom was no doubt broadened by the years he served at Johns Hopkins as the Martin W. Donner Professor of Radiology and radiologist-in-chief of The Johns Hopkins Hospital (1987–1994).
Brody would go on to teach the course again after he retired as director of the Salk Institute (2009–2016), and settled in Baltimore. Now he’s turned his insights into a book, co-written with Mike Field, which was published this spring by Johns Hopkins University Press. Filled with engaging real-world situations, Uncommon Sense: Rethinking Ordinary Problems in Extraordinary Ways aims to help readers — both young and older — grapple with problems for which the answers are not known ahead of time, he says.
“I had the feeling that students … were challenged to think critically about problems that have never been posed.” – William R. Brody
As president of Johns Hopkins University, Brody was an early advocate for the Center for Innovative Medicine, encouraging Director David Hellmann to “think big” when he established CIM in 2004. Thus, it should probably come as no surprise that CIM’s central tenets — promoting medicine for the greater good, the need to humanize medicine in the face of technological advance — resonate with themes that permeate Uncommon Sense.
Brody emphasizes the importance of acting in a way to improve the lives of others. In developing our sense of what gives us satisfaction, he writes, “Much of that will come by way of interaction with other people and by giving back to society in one form or another.”
“As I look back on my life,” he says, “the opportunity to have mentored people like Dr. Hellmann and to see them succeed is so much more important to me than all the honors I collected.”
In Uncommon Sense, Brody also emphasizes that good decision-making in situations involving other people should be anchored in paying close attention to human behavior — advice that is also crucial for effective doctoring, he notes. “Even though I was a surgical type, throughout my career I always believed that interaction with the patient, understanding their history, was critical,” he says.
Lamenting how pressures in U.S. health care today — excessive workloads, heavy documentation, time constraints — have combined to “dehumanize” both patients and those who care for them, Brody points to the growth of the Center for Innovative Medicine as a reason for optimism.
“Medicine is in such need of rescue,” he says. “CIM is more relevant today than it’s ever been.”
