Thread by @DirkSchwenk

Gather 'round children. Let me tell you the story of an American hero, smart person and nurse. A thread. And a touch of #DemsDoGood. And maybe a love story.

She is head of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Let's break that down. The NIH is one of the greatest governmental research orgs to exist on the planet, ever. The CC is its research hospital, where they apply medical science.

The most difficult questions in medicine are about how to research ethically. By definition, you are trying unproven treatments. You have to ask patients to roll the dice WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW if treatment will help. My very good friend - now passed on - was at CC for treatment

The number one person - the boss - of those decisions is a Nurse. Her name is Christine Grady. Put some respect on her name. Tell your daughters about her. BS, nursing, Georgetown 74. MS, Nursing, Boston College '78. PhD, philosophy and bioethcs, Georgetown 1993.

Now the reason that I know her name - these past 24 hours - is because I was in a phone convo with my wife (2 MAs, George Washington) and mother in law (PhD, Hopkins) and we were talking about another Stud, American Hero, Smart Person - Dr. Fauci.

And we wondered about his personal life. Well, shit. Married to the premier medical bioethicist in the US. Three daughters. All of them under threat these past years by Trumpists. This is her day. elle.com/culture/career…

And so I made myself a note to write a bit about her. But it's hard. Her wikipedia page entry is 3 paragraphs. His is 20 pages. And sure he's on CCN, and I get that, but damn ... she deserves recognition.

The only two stories I can find in the US are in Elle elle.com/culture/career… and in Vogue vogue.com/article/dr-ant… and that's cool and all BUT COME ON

And the Vogue story, which isn't bad mind you - got 4 comments and 178 likes on its tweet, so let's boost that. Vogue should be encouraged to cover brilliant women who are american patriots not slanky or whoever else they profile.

https://twitter.com/voguemagazine/status/1361606695366127616?s=20

And I think I speak for us all, I'm glad she is also trying to keep Dr. Fauci hydrated, fed and rested at least a little bit.

Her most recent research is on one of the most tragic aspects of current COVID treatment - isolation from families. What a massively important topic for both patient and staff.

She has also been responsible for trying to deal with allocation of new but scarce treatments like remdsivir. I wonder what she thought of Trump and other insiders getting their dirty fingers on the supply.

If you dig this kind of thing, I always appreciate a follow. I am not a world class smart woman, but I vote for them when I can.

And of course, since she is a brilliant, accomplished woman doing the work of good ... there are twitter trolls attempting to smear her because memo to y'all twitter trolls smear all good women

OK, Dirk out. Please spread this post. The twitterverse needs to know about the people doing the important, difficult work of our governance.