Article Summary by Peter Stilwell There is now widespread consensus that pain is subjective, meaning that it is a private and personal experience. Because pain is experienced from a person’s unique perspective, others (e.g., healthcare practitioners, family, friends) cannot directly “see” or fully understand what the experience is like. To somewhat express what it is […]
Category: Journal Announcements
Genetic Enhancement, TED Talks and the Sense of Wonder
Article Summary by Loredana Filip Science can be communicated to the public in various ways, including books and journal articles. And yet in our digital world, online interactions have a growing impact on the audience. TED talks became a widely available and highly popular resource for the communication and reception of science. They reach huge […]
Shame-to-Cynicism Conversion in The Citadel and The House of God
Article Summary by Arthur Rose “Shame is everywhere in medicine”, a recent call for voices by The Nocturnists reminds us, “and yet—due to its taboo nature and the culture of silence that surrounds it—shame is nowhere in healthcare”. Admitting shame is often, itself, treated as shameful, which may account for this ubiquitous absence. This article […]
History, Pastness and the Postgenomic Imaginary
Article Summary by Jerome de Groot The mapping of the Human Genome is one of the most important advances in scientific knowledge in the past century. It means that we can ‘know’ the human body in increasingly complex detail. In this article I look at the ways that a number of artists – rappers, poets, […]
A Brief and Personal History of ‘What’s in a Name’ in Reproductive Genetics
Article Summary by Jeff Nisker Although Juliet’s claim, ’What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’, may apply to family names, ‘that which we call’ embryos and procedures in reproductive genetics often smell sweet because the names were created to perfume not-so-sweet-smelling practices. Reproductive-genetic scientists […]
Global Genetic Fictions
Article Summary by Clare Barker In ‘Global Genetic Fictions’, Clare Barker introduces the concerns of the special issue. This special issue explores cultural representations of genes, the human genome and genetic science in a range of artforms and genres, including poetry, genre fiction, rap music, TED talks, popular science, historical fiction and postcolonial literature. The […]
Can Death Cafés Resuscitate Morale in Hospitals?
Article Summary by Rachel Hammer Death Cafés are non-profit social franchises that arise spontaneously in communities to serve as informal forums for discussing death. There is a great need within the medical community for the kind of conversation that Death Cafés foster: open, unstructured, spontaneous, genuine and interdisciplinary dialogue. This paper describes a model for […]
On the Need for an Ecologically Dimensioned Medical Humanities
Article Summary by Jonathan Coope Healthcare often tends to be compartmentalized as something quite separate from issues of ecology and ecological sustainability. Yet health impacts of global warming and other environmental problems alert us to the fact that health and the fate of the biosphere are inextricably related and always have been. Yet western modernity, […]
‘Look Under the Sheets!’ Fighting with the Senses in Relation to Defecation and Bodily Care in Hospitals and Care Institutions
Article Summary by Sjaak van der Geest and Shahaduz Zaman Studies of hospital care pay little attention to unpleasant experiences of nurses and patients with regard to dirt and defecation. Disgust and embarrassment about dirt complicate the work of nurses and the well-being of patients. In this article we focus on conditions of hospital care […]
‘The Internet Both Reassures and Terrifies’: Exploring the More-Than-Human Worlds of Health Information Using the Story Completion Method
Article Summary by Deborah Lupton This article reports the findings of a study using an innovative approach to understanding people’s beliefs and practices: the story completion method. This method asks people to complete story ‘stems’, writing about a fictional character. The completed narratives are then analysed for the shared cultural norms and discourses they revealed. […]