Article Summary by Beth Malory “The transition from abortion to miscarriage to describe early pregnancy loss in British medical journals: A prescribed or natural lexical change?”, published in Medical Humanities in March 2022, investigates the origins of the shift from use of the word ‘abortion’ to ‘miscarriage’ in medical British English. Using the statistical technique Change Point Analysis, this […]
Category: Special Issues
Biopower Under a State of Exception: Stories of Dying and Grieving Alone During COVID-19 Emergency Measures
Article Summary by J. Cristian Rangel For Helen During the first waves of COVID-19, governments across the world enforced lockdown policies with the intention of protecting entire populations from infection and death. This was done under a climate of scientific and medical uncertainty about the infectivity and lethality of the novel coronavirus. Because these policies […]
‘The Time is Out of Joint’: Temporality, COVID-19 and Graphic Medicine
Article Summary by Sathyaraj Venkatesan and Ishani Anwesha Joshi The article theorizes the human experiences of time during the lockdown and COVID-19 pandemic through selected comics. This research discusses how comics can be used to communicate the passage of time and argues that the events of the pandemic have shifted our temporal experience from clock […]
Collecting Affect: Emotion and Empathy in World War II Photographs and Drawings of Plastic Surgery
Article Summary by Christine Slobogin Diana “Dickie” Orpen (1911-1987) and Percy Hennell (1911-1987) were both surgical artists who represented Second World War patients’ wounds and their reconstructive processes within English plastic surgery wards. The major difference between these two actors is that Orpen made drawings and Hennell took photographs. This article looks at the work […]
In Critique of Anthropocentrism: A More-than-Human Ethical Framework for Antimicrobial Resistance
Article Summary by Jose A. Cañada, Salla Sariola and Andrea Butcher Antibiotics are currently the main method for controlling bacterial infections. However, their extensive use has led bacteria to develop resistance towards them. This means that the same amount of antibiotic is less and less effective in treating infections. This process is known as […]
Fatherlessness, Sperm Donors and ‘So What?’ Parentage: Arguing Against the Immorality of Donor Conception Through ‘World Literature’
Article Summary by Grace Halden Is biology and knowing biological ancestral information essential to the construction of identity? Bioethicist James David Velleman believes this is the case and argues that donor gamete conception is immoral because a portion of genetic heritage will be unknown. Velleman is critical of sperm donation and the absence of a […]
Wars and Sweets: Microbes, Medicines and other Moderns in and Beyond the(ir) Antibiotic Era
Article Summary by Coll de Lima Hutchison My article brings together diverse literatures in a playful manner to plot rises in antimicrobial resistance, COVID-19 and our warlike responses (e.g. increased surveillance of microbes, more rational disciplined subjects and increasing our antibiotic armentarium) to them, alongside other acts of ‘real’ war. It speculates that modern war […]
Capable of Being in Uncertainties: Applied Medical Humanities in Undergraduate Medical Education
Article Summary by Neepa Thacker, Jennifer Wallis and Jo Winning What are the skills required by the 21st-century doctor to deliver the best person-centred care? Medical humanities have a vital role to play in undergraduate medical education where medicine is seen as an ‘art’ as well as a ‘science’ (Wald, McFarland, and Markovina 2018). We […]
Science Fiction Authors’ Perspectives on Human Genetic Engineering
Article Summary by Derek So, Kelsey Crocker, Robert Sladek and Yann Joly One of the most notable scientific developments of the past decade was the CRISPR “gene editing” system, which made it much easier to change DNA sequences and even enabled scientists to create genetically modified children in China. Scientists, bioethicists, journalists and the public […]
Picturing Sanity, in Black and White
Article Summary by Bryan Mukandi This article tries to simulate a strange journey through a maze built around writers and artists, all grappling with the question of what it means to be ‘normal’, to ‘belong’. There are lots of ways to approach these questions. I focus on the experiences of people who struggle to maintain […]