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Stanford University School of Medicine

Why become a doctor? “Fixing the brain” is not impossible

Stubbornness is not often credited with motivating a career in medicine. But when a young Frank Longo, MD, PhD, asked why doctors couldn't help his sister with cerebral palsy, his mother, a nurse, told him that damaged brains can't be fixed.

Longo explains how that answer just wasn't acceptable to him in this video by Stanford Health Care:

 That never left me. I thought about many other things but I kept coming back to wanting to create something that would fix a brain...

I can't turn away from an 'impossible' challenge.

That goal has propelled him to tackle the trickiest neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's -- with many successes. And now Longo is convinced: "It is not impossible to fix the brain."

Previously: Why become a doctor? A personal story from a Stanford neurosurgeon, Why become a doctor? A personal story from a Stanford plastic surgeon, and Why become a doctor? A personal story from a Stanford oncologist

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