[riggins]

I assumed that the author is himself an MD in another speciality.

1. The quote below. The most likely way the author would know this is that the author went to med school. Its possible the author interviewed MDs about their med school experience, but seems less likely.

In medical school, aspiring doctors spend a few minutes at most on these relatively unusual conditions, which are thought of, and taught as, rare. By the time many begin practicing medicine, many doctors aren’t even aware of the minute distinctions on the sub-spectrum of posterior fossa cysts, if they ever really understood them at all.

2.

I come, after all, from a family of doctors educated at “top” institutions. How could it really be possible that despite decades of intense trying as educated, middle-class people, we knew absolutely nothing?

[pragone]

Interesting. I did not make that assumption, but you may very well be correct.

I understood the first comment as merely an assumption, rather than personal experience. Again, I may be wrong.

I would expect a physician to have an easier time convincing colleagues to run something as non-invasive as an MRI, but that may no longer be the case in many institutions.

[et2o]

The author is not an MD and has not attended medical school.

[riggins]

how were you able to determine that?

[et2o]

"[...] my hypothesis about the true nature of my brother’s condition — the hypothesis of a non-MD, it is important to note [...]"

In the first paragraph of the story.