Year as VP prepares Dr. Cook to defend issues critical to pediatrics

Kindness is what drew Don Cook, M.D., FAAP, to pediatrics.

As a child, and later in medical school, "the pediatricians I met were, to me, just the kindest, most caring doctors that I met, and I wanted to be part of it. They were just different, they just stood out," he recalled, because they cared more for children than advancing themselves.

As he begins his year as AAP president, however, Dr. Cook, 71, feels pediatricians' intrinsic kindness is under siege.