DR. ATUL GAWANDE IS conducting a simulated thyroid removal at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The operation is a bloody procedure.  It involves about 100 instruments and dozens of surgical sponges, small gauzelike pads used for sopping up blood. Each time Gawande asks for more sponges, the nurses count them aloud before handing them over—the standard…

The end of the cold war was cruel to Cuba. The country’s trading partners, denied Soviet largesse, dried up. Hard cash ran low. What food the country could grow languished in the fields; trucks didn’t have enough gasoline to bring the crops to market. And of course there was the US embargo. What Cubans call “the…