Prof. David Mendes was born in Rome to a family of physicians. His grandfather Prof. Mendes oversaw the Red Cross hospital in Rome. In 1939 his family migrated to Israel and his father and grandfather were pioneers in the treatment of tuberculosis and its eradication. After completing his residency in orthopedic surgery, he established a hip surgery clinic at a New York hospital. During the Six Day War and The Yom Kippur War he went to Israel to volunteer in the IDF Medical Corps. From 1975 until his retirement in 2002 he ran the Department of Orthopedic Surgery and the Center for Implant Surgery at the Bnei Zion Medical Center in Haifa. He served as a professor on the clinical staff of Yeshiva University in New York, a member of the academic staff at Mt. Sinai in New York and at the Technion in Haifa, organized and oversaw the annual international conferences of the Center for Implant Surgery, and trained a generation of orthopedic surgeons. Today he writes about various subjects and last year he published the book “Who Is Afraid of Medical Malpractice?”