The patient was an 8-year-old California girl with severe headaches. Her parents, who were both struggling to adjust to new high-pressure jobs, took her to top neurologists and pediatricians. The child's symptoms, the doctors concluded, were a response to stress at home, along with perhaps a sinus condition. But four or five months later, it became clear that she had a brain tumor and needed surgery. When her doctors looked back at early scans of her brain, they were aghast to see the shadow of a tumor they had previously overlooked.
For Harvard hematologist Jerome Groopman, who is a friend of...