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 […]
Latest articles
Diagnosis: Truth and Tales
Review by Jeffrey M. Brown Jutel, Annemarie Goldstein. Diagnosis: Truth and Tales. University of Toronto Press, 2019. In a short verse from his posthumous collection Falling Ill (2016), American poet C. K. Williams offered a richly ambiguous representation of his experience receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis. The poem, “Diagnosis,” begins with a coherent reflection on […]
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 […]
Nature, Film, and Positive Change
Blog by Jayaraj Jayaraj, award-wining film maker, reflects on ‘Birds Club International’ an Environment Project on the World Day to combat Desertification and Drought, 17th June 2021. Birds Club International (BCI) aims to revive nature by not just planting trees, but by cooperating with various individuals and organisations in our society to highlight the […]
Depersonalization of Suffering Amidst COVID-19 Second Wave in India
Blog by Swati Satish Joshi The understanding of the suffering of patients infected with corona virus, especially during the second wave in India, transformed from being subjective to objective, personal to data-centric, and general to individual. While media was engrossed in covering stories of blame (critiquing liberties sanctioned by government, for instance, gatherings of thousands […]
The Cornell-Penn Interview for Decisional Abilities: A Tool to Assess the Decisional Ability of Older Adult Victims of Abuse or Neglect
Blog by Robert C. Abrams, Pamela Ansell and Veronica Lo Faso Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY USA As global attention is directed to the mistreatment of older adults on June 15, World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, it is timely to consider how victims of abuse and neglect make […]
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 […]
Celebrating PRIDE Month with Brian Sims!
EIC Brandy Schillace Speaks with Brian Sims We are excited to celebrate Pride Month with a podcast! Join Brandy Schillace as she interviews Representative Brian Sims, openly gay LQBTQ rights advocate from Center City Philadelphia, who is running for Lt. Governor. In politics, Sims tells us, we’re very fond of saying this is the most […]
Lithium: A Doctor, A Drug, and a Breakthrough
Book review by Laura Grace Simpkins Walter A. Brown. Liveright. 2020. ISBN 9781631497902 I was prescribed lithium carbonate—two 400mg tablets to be gulped down with a large glug of water before bed—nearly four years ago. For a while I knew only several vague details about my medication: it was ‘natural’, it could easily be ‘toxic’, […]
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, […]