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 […]
Category: Reflection
Medical Necessity, from the Every Day to Times of Crisis
Reflection by Daniel Skinner When I set out to write Medical Necessity: Health Care and the Politics of Decision Making, I had no idea that it would be published right as a pandemic was beginning to make its way around the world. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but my persistent thought over the past few […]
Classics in Time of Pandemic: Lockdown Reflections from the Ivory Tower
Reflection by Michiel Meeusen Michiel Meeusen received his PhD in Literature from KU Leuven in 2013. He specialises in ancient science and medicine and the literature and culture of the High Roman Empire (Orcid). Western literature starts with a disease. At the beginning of the Iliad, Homer sings of an “evil pestilence” sent by […]
Unintended Impacts of COVID-19 Social Distancing
Blog by Dr. Thurka Sangaramoorthy Thurka Sangaramoorthy is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and an expert on issues of infectious disease outbreaks, health equity, and social justice. She is the author of Treating AIDS: Politics of Difference, Paradox of Prevention (Rutgers University, 2014) and Rapid Ethnographic Assessments: A […]
Ectogenesis at Home? Artificial Wombs and Access to Care
Blog by Claire Horn In our accessibility series, Claire Horn reflects on the moral dilemmas presented by the advent of a new reproductive technology that allows for gestation outside the womb. —Cristina Hanganu-Bresch The last several years have seen significant progress toward the development of an artificial womb which would facilitate the survival […]
Hippocrates Now: Quoting the Father of Medicine
Blog by Helen King Helen King is Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University, UK My latest book is about the Hippocratic corpus, but although I’m a classicist by training I only address the usual issues of authorship, theories and practices to set the scene. Instead, my focus is on what I’ve called […]
Why Graded Exercise Therapy and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy are Controversial in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Commentary by Michiel Tack Sharpe and Greco ask the interesting question of why cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and graded exercise therapy (GET) are controversial in the field of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), this whe is not combine with a natural testosterone booster to improve the performance. One reason is that the type of CBT prescribed […]
Towards More Thoughtful Evidence Communication
Reflection by Aleksi Raudasoja In the end of my training in medical school, I was having an identity crisis as a medical doctor. In medical school, I was taught to follow practice guidelines and many times told how they represent the best available evidence. Nice, I thought, sounds like I’m not going to make mistakes […]
The History of a Superstition
Reflection by GL Krishna (The ministry of AYUSH, Government of India, recently issued an advisory that reiterated its long held official view that “the principles, concepts and approaches of ayurveda are not at all comparable with those of the modern medical system.” This view of an absolute dichotomy between the two systems implicitly disputes the […]
To Be or Not to Be: Is TB Elimination Possible in India Through a Humanistic Approach?
Reflection by Kesavan Rajasekharan Nayar India is one of the few countries where Tuberculosis is still widely prevalent. One of the oldest of human diseases in recorded history is still inhumanly ravaging lives despite India developing one of the most human-centred National Tuberculosis Programs way back in the sixties.1 It gave primacy to the people […]