93
EW IN OTHER NEWS
by Ellen Stodola EyeWorld Senior Staff Writer
and it's hard to tell what's actually
going on inside the software.
After someone from a small film
studio in Los Angeles purchased the
book on Amazon, read it, and liked
Dr. Clarke's sci-fi book
has also been adapted
into a film
F
or Gerald Clarke, MD,
Oshkosh, Wisconsin,
writing has always been a
passion. Though he went
into medicine and has been
practicing ophthalmology for several
decades, he has continued to keep
up with his writing.
"I've always been a writer," he
said. Initially, Dr. Clarke was focused
on mathematics, and as a child, he
was sent off to be a child prodigy in
mathematics. However, he said that
he burned out on that quickly.
Mathematics can be similar to
writing, he said, because you have
to concentrate and shut the whole
world out. "I can concentrate hard
for hours and hours on a problem
to solve it." After giving up mathe-
matics, he focused his interests on
writing and contemplated becoming
a playwright.
Though Dr. Clarke wrote several
plays in high school and college, he
knew it was more of a hobby and
didn't think he would be successful
at it, so he decided to go into medi-
cine when he went to college.
At first, he started off in pediat-
rics, but then switched to ophthal-
mology. There's that "wow factor"
in ophthalmology, he said, and
generally, there are very successful
outcomes. "I've been in ophthalmol-
ogy for 35 years and never regretted
1 day of it," he said. Dr. Clarke said
he loves to innovate and bring out
new ideas.
His practice is currently busier
than ever. "I'm operating on all my
friends now," he said. "We've gotten
into [the] baby boomer surgical
years." This means that Dr. Clarke
often finds himself putting in 50-
hour weeks. The business side of
ophthalmology has become much
more time consuming, he said.
With a busy practice, there is
less time to write, but Dr. Clarke said
that when he is alone at home, he
will sit down and write. He also en-
joys listening to audio books to hear
how other people write to help with
his own process.
Most notably, Dr. Clarke wrote
a book titled The Drone Virus, which
was also adapted into a movie. Dr.
Clarke explained that he wrote the
book around 2000. "The initial writ-
ing is easy for me," he said. Though
it only took him about 3–4 months
to write the story, the process was
then prolonged with the editing.
It went through around 7 edits, he
added.
Dr. Clarke's book is a sci-fi
medical mystery, which he said he
wrote around the time that comput-
er viruses were becoming common.
The story came from the possibility
of a virus being able to infiltrate an
MRI machine, either by someone
introducing it or by spontaneous
evolution. In Dr. Clarke's story, the
scanner uses its own artificial intelli-
gence pattern recognition software,
June 2016
Ophthalmologist writes sci-fi
medical mystery and more
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continued on page 94
Gerald Clarke, MD
Do you have a hobby, interest, or sideline
work that might be of interest to your
fellow ophthalmologists?
Please contact Amy Goldenberg,
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