Dr. Richard Kay Root
Dr. Richard Kay RootDr. Richard Kay Root
Prologue: Standing on the Edge of the Cliff
For nearly a century, medicine in America was a covenant — a sacred pact between healer and healed. Today, that covenant is breaking. The physician, once trusted as the architect of modern medicine and a steward of knowledge, is now drowning in bureaucracy and moral injury. The patient, once central to the golden age of medicine, is lost in a maze of billing codes and corporate care. Both stand on the same cliff — one exhausted, the other unaware that the ground is giving way. This is not merely the erosion of a profession; it reflects the slow disintegration of the last great human trust in modern society. If medicine fails, everything that depends on it — family, aging, birth, death, dignity — fails with it. As Richard Root has noted, the implications of this breakdown are profound.
THE ROOT REPORT
Personal Remembrance
My father ate, drank, and slept medicine, embodying the role of an Architect of Modern Medicine. It was the inevitable topic of every meal, which doubled as a type of grand rounds or medical conference. Staff recruitment and high-level chairman meetings transpired at our family dinners and social events, which we could never miss. From the '60s to my father's death in 2006, we were firsthand witnesses to what is now called the Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of Medicine.
