Marvin Lipman, MD CC'49 PS'54

If you wondered whether Marvin M. Lipman, MD (Columbia College 1949, VP&S 1954) is a Columbia man through and through, a quick glance around his office, decorated with lions, leaves no doubt.

Dr. Lipman, an internist, and endocrinologist, since 1967 has served as chief medical adviser and editor of Consumer Reports, and continues to work at his Westchester practice, where third-year P&S students rotate through as part of their medical educations.

Dr. Lipman continues to be favorably impressed by the breadth of their interests (not just in medicine and science, but music, dance, architecture, among others), and their relationships with those they serve: “They are more aware of the lives of their patients than we were, not just treating their diseases, but caring for their entire well-being.”

He recognizes, too, the pressures a young doctor can feel from the obligation of student debt, and how what he describes as “the backbones of medicine”—family practice and internal medicine— can get short shrift as recent VP&S graduates choose other fields.

This is why Dr. Lipman has made a planned gift to VP&S: so Columbia-trained doctors— the most knowledgeable and the most accomplished—can avoid what he calls “the tunnel vision we too often see in the practice of medicine, and pursue careers that are most important to them, and to us.“ For more information about making a planned gift to VP&S, and how you too can make a Columbia medical education possible for the very brightest young people, please contact dev_plannedgiving@cumc.columbia.edu.