Speed: The Challenge to Medicine in the New Era

Richard V. Lee; Frank Davidoff

doi:10.7326/0003-4819-132-1-200001040-00015

Editorials |4 January 2000

Speed: The Challenge to Medicine in the New Era

Richard V. Lee, MD; Frank Davidoff, MD

Article, Author, and Disclosure Information

At its most basic level, the coming of a millennium has strictly to do with calendars. As such, it is an arbitrary, culture-bound event, a point underscored by the realization that even the nominal starting date for the new era, 1 January 2000, is wrong. It is a year early, because Dionysius Exiguus, the 6th-century Roman monk who created the calendar we now use, began his new calendar with the year 1 (Roman mathematics lacked the concept of zero) (2). Other calendars, including those associated with the Buddhist and Hebrew traditions, register nothing unusual about the day we call 1 January 2000 or 1 January 2001, for that matter.

But for all that, the coming of a millennium, as with so many other anniversaries, is an event of enormous social, emotional, and spiritual power; its influence extends far beyond numbers on a calendar, reaching apocalyptic proportions for some. Although the exact nature of that power is obscure, it clearly springs from roots that extend deep into our biology, our psychology, our history. Our response to the coming of a millennium says as much about us as human beings as it does about calendars and religion (3). More particularly, the coming of a millennium speaks to our relationship to time—that most compelling and elusive of forces, and the very raw material of calendars.

Time began. Most of us, evolutionists and creationists alike, share that intuition. And we suspect, but can't prove, that time will end. It probably began with...

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Editorials |4 January 2000

Speed: The Challenge to Medicine in the New Era

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Editorials |4 January 2000

Speed: The Challenge to Medicine in the New Era

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