Blog by Steven H. Miles, MD The two-faced Roman god Janus is about transitions: from what came before to what now begins, from war to peace or from peace to war. It is easy to imagine the image of Janus atop the arch of this moment in the history of the medical profession. Here, it […]
Category: Blog
Black History Month Feature: Margaret Morgan Lawrence
Blog by Cristina Hanganu-Bresch Today we honor Margaret Morgan Lawrence (1914-2019), a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, trailblazer pioneer in children’s community health. Lawrence had a storied career that was threatened at many turns by the intersection of racism and sexism. A graduate of Cornell in 1936 (when dorms were still segregated), she was denied entrance at […]
Black History Month Features: Mae Jemison
Feature1 by Brandy Schillace It’s true that doctors wear many hats. Mae Jemison also wore a space suit. In today’s feature, we honor Mae Jemison, an American engineer, physician, and NASA astronaut. Jemison attended Cornell Medical School, after receiving her degree in chemical engineering. During her years at Cornell, she worked at a Cambodian refugee […]
From contradictory to complementary: Acknowledging the complex everyday choices of men’s sexualities
by Dr. Jaime García-Iglesias and Joe Strong In response to the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK, Soho-based sexual health clinic 56 Dean Street launched the campaign ‘Break the Chain’ (also known as ‘Test Now, Stop HIV’): based on the belief that people would not meet for sex during the lockdown, the campaign pushed for postal […]
Belonging
by Eunice Stallman, MD I had just received a call that I had been accepted to medical school. The first thing I did was to call my significant other to share the exciting news. The second thing I did was pull up google to search, “best time to have children in medical training?” I was certain […]
Whither Medical Professionalism
by Daniel Skinner The ongoing pandemic and the many failures of leadership we’ve witnessed over the past few months have moved me to reflect on the meaning of so-called professionalism. We’ve certainly seen the heroization of medical professionals working in hospitals around the U.S. But, as this translates to the training of future physicians, are […]
Death Penalty in Times of COVID-19
by Carlos Franco-Paredes MD, MPH and Vanessa Kung MD, MPH The death penalty is part of the history of racial discrimination in the United States and oppressive structures along with slavery, lynchings, and racial segregation.1,2 Over time, dramatic supreme justice decisions have led to controversial views surrounding its legality and morality.3,4 The advent in the 1980s […]
On valuing data virtuously
by Bharadwaj V. Chada As has often been the case throughout its esteemed and eventful seventy-year history, the NHS once again finds itself caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. This time, we’re talking about data. Health informatics has come of age over the last decade, with developments in Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and […]
The Future is Convalescence: Rethinking Recovery and the End of Covid–19
by Avril Tynan The progress and effectiveness of potential Covid–19 vaccines in the last few weeks have brought a new glimmer of hope to the closing months of 2020. While much of Europe remains under restrictions, or is tentatively emerging from a second lockdown, the new AstraZeneca-Oxford, BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are offering hope of […]
It’s time for a Covid-19 Memorial “AIDS” quilt
by Alison Bateman-House To memorialize the death of over 1,000 San Franciscans due to AIDS, in 1985 gay rights activist Cleve Jones asked individuals attending an annual march to create placards containing the name of those who had died. After the march, these were taped to a building, where they resembled a patchwork quilt. Thus […]