No one ever sat down and designed the U.S. health-care "system." It simply evolved, in bits and pieces. As it now threatens to crack under its own weight, a DMS faculty member is a leading proponent of the need to stop tinkering and rethink things—from a "microsystem" perspective.

June 2006 marks the 25th anniversary of the first published report about AIDS—a paper coauthored by a DMS alumnus. In the quarter of a century since then, the disease has swept the globe and killed 25 million people.

Hundreds of Shriners were in town for an annual highschool all-star football game and pre-game parade. What started as a festive day, filled with miniature motorbikes and capering clowns, turned chilling as the Mary Hitchcock Emergency Room began to fill up with sick Shriners.