About the book: The noted physician, Dr. Michael D. Lockshin, Professor of Medicine and Obstetrics-Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine and Director of the Barbara Volcker Center at the Hospital for Special Surgery, explores seldom discussed issues of contemporary medical practice—how should and how do patients respond when diagnoses are uncertain? How should and how do doctors respond? Or insurers and other administrators? How do each of these groups balance short-term versus long-term goals? The Prince at the Ruined Tower is a book about patients, doctors, and the health care system written by a physician with broad experience in the world of chronic illness.

In this book Dr. Lockshin explores the notion that it is the doctor’s job to reject dogmatism and instead articulate uncertainty to him/her-self, to the patient, to the student, and to the administrative health care world. Articulated and incorporated into planning, uncertainty becomes an additional tool that can be used for a positive good.

Dr. Lockshin is a pioneer in solving both the medical and the personal health-care issues that arise for patients with chronic illnesses. He has done his most renowned research on autoimmune illnesses, particularly those that affect women — systemic lupus erythematosus, antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, and pregnancy-related problems of these illnesses.

Michael Lockshin, M.D.  is Director of the Barbara Volcker Center for Women and Rheumatic Disease, Hospital for Special Surgery, and Professor of Medicine and Obstetrics-Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School.

He is the author two books for the lay audience, Guarded Prognosis, 1998, and, with Alida Brill, Dancing at the River’s Edge, 2009, as well as more than 300 medical journal articles and book chapters, primarily on systemic lupus erythematosus, antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, and pregnancy in rheumatic diseases.