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The Importance of the Intellectual Base of the Specialty

Arch Dermatol. 2000;136:24.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Author's Note: What follows is a slight modification of my presidential address to the Society for Investigative Dermatology in April 1996. At the time, I offered a brief assessment of the state of the specialty. Given the direction American medicine has take in the intervening 4 years, and having been near the center of the maelstrom that continues to buffet one academic medical center (my own, which is Stanford), I can only reassert that the convictions I held in 1996 are more not less valid now.

Dermatology, from an intellectual standpoint, has never been more exciting. Indeed, research in skin biology is offering unique opportunities for us to understand the interface between humans and our environment. Paradoxically, dermatology, as a clinical discipline, is in danger of being marginalized in the so-called health care marketplace.

Much of the public and many provider organizations consider dermatology to be the study of relatively . . . [Full Text of this Article]