Dr. Turek's Blog

The Flipside of Living Forever

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

Name some issues brand new to this world in the last 100 years. How about nuclear war, environmental pollution and climate change? Medically, we can blame carpal tunnel syndrome on the typewriter or computer keyboard, and “automobile knee” on that awful car commute. Hard to know whether these marks on modern society are preferable to […]

The Boy with the Varicocele

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

The case of the month is an actual patient of The Turek Clinic His head was topped with bobbing red hair and his face full of freckles. Thin as a beanpole, he spoke softly as if trying to control his cracking pubertal voice. All in, he appeared to be the stuff that teenage boys are […]

A Tale of Three Testicles

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

Its funny what people think about every day. Some decide exactly where to paint the lines in our streets. Others, called Gumbusters, remove gum stuck to park benches. Jelly Doughnut Fillers do precisely that, and Golf Ball Divers find stray golf balls that land underwater. And what would casinos do without certified Dice Inspectors? Better […]

Getting Out of the Fast Lane

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

The eggs didn’t fertilize. No sperm was found. The embryos fell apart in the dish. The pregnancy test was negative, again. To boot, you’re out of money and utterly and totally exhausted. Your mind is an empty room on a cold, gray day, filled only by the scattered noise of rustling leaves outside. And now […]

Making Mapping Matter

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

She approached the microphone slowly from the back of the room, appearing to float, wrapped in her colorful hijab. A doctor from Pakistan, she had some questions and a comment after hearing my talk. A Kind Interrogation “Your Sperm Mapping™ technique for azoospermic men” she stated softly, “is it done under just local anesthesia?” “Yes,” I […]

A Toast to the Jewels on World Vasectomy Day

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

You might think that publicly celebrating vasectomies is like celebrating root canals! But think about it. You have a root canal to relief pain and to be able to eat again, but you have vasectomy not only for you, but also for others, like family, and for the world at large. It’s taking one for […]

Getting Men Over the Infertility Hump

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

You’ve heard of gene therapy right? What ever happened to it? Born back in the 1990’s, the same decade that Viagra was introduced to the world, gene therapy has not fared nearly as well as the little blue pill. Why not? First of all, gene therapy, in which DNA is put into cells to treat […]

MicroTESE vs. FNA Mapping: Medieval or Modern?

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

Put two experts in a room and give each of them the same problem to solve. What you’ll find is that they typically use similar “knowledge structures” and “heuristic strategies” (i.e. organized and principled thinking) and then proceed to break the problem into smaller, more digestible ones to solve it. But, despite similar cognitive approaches, the […]

Care = Knowledge + Gut = Babies

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

There is a lot of “information” out there nowadays. It all started way back when we humans started talking. Then came the written word, and then television, and now it’s the world-wide-web, that great wellspring of all things knowable. Thomas Jefferson considered information the “currency of democracy,” and Ronald Reagan termed it the “oxygen of […]

Fact, Theory and Truth in Science

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

I am giving a talk to a large gathering of Kaiser docs from Southern California this week on whether a relationship exists between male infertility and the later development of cancer. We have published some of the most convincing data to date to suggest that they are linked. But is it really, absolutely true? What […]