Welcome to the Medical Humanities podcast, where today we are pleased to have Rita Colwell join us for International Women’s Day! In addition to discussing the trials and successes of being a woman in science, she also talks to us about her new book A Lab of One’s Own. Rita Colwell is one of the […]
Latest articles
Apologies Alone Won’t Solve Structural Racism: We Need a Reckoning with the Racist Roots of U.S. Medicine
Response by Jacqueline Antonovich, Rana Hogarth, Elise Mitchell, Graham Mooney, Ayah Nuriddin, Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Kylie Smith, Christopher Willoughby and Alexandre White Recently, JAMA’s Clinical Reviews podcast recorded an episode with the Twitter headline: No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care? The tweet is now deleted, and JAMA […]
Healthcare Providers’ Engagement with Eating Disorder Recovery Narratives: Opening to Complexity and Diversity
Article Summary by Andrea LaMarre and Carla Rice There is very little training around eating disorders across different areas and levels of healthcare. It is even less common to see training that shares the perspectives of people with lived experiences and their supporters with healthcare providers and healthcare provider trainees (HCPs). In this study, we […]
Civilian Lunatic Asylums During the First World War: A Study of Austerity on London’s Fringe
Book Review by Peter Tyrer Claire Hilton. Palgrave MacMillan, 2021. ISBN 978-3-030-54870-4 The moral status of a country can be determined by its treatment of the mentally ill. On this count Norway and Sweden do well, Russia and the US do badly, and the United Kingdom is in between. But was it always thus? This […]
Advocating for Survivors of Human Trafficking
Blog by Dipal Savla and Kanani Titchen “Erick” presented to the adolescent medicine clinic in San Diego, California for his routine wellness appointment. He was a new patient, so the doctor focused the appointment on getting to know him. Erick lived with a foster family. His mother, lacking access to necessary medical care, had recently […]
Recognition, Collaboration and Community: Science Fiction Representations of Robot Carers in Robot & Frank, Big Hero 6 and Humans
Article Summary by Yugin Teo This paper is interested in how three science fiction texts that came out in the 2010s explored in distinct ways the relationship between robot carers and their human users: the films Robot & Frank (2012) and Big Hero 6 (2014), and the television series Humans (2015–2019). The paper examines ethical […]
The Power of Equity: Interview with Oni Blackstock
Welcome back to the medical humanities podcast. I am Brandy Schillace, Editor in Chief, and today we are speaking with Dr. Oni Blackstock. In this episode, we discuss the powerful influence of Black women in medicine and in health justice. What will it take to change the course of healthcare and ensure equity for all? […]
Black History Month: Featuring Dr. Charles DeWitt Watts (1917-2004)
In today’s feature, we honor the long career of Dr. Charles DeWitt Watts (1917-2004). Dr. Watts, the first African American to be certified by a surgical specialty board in North Carolina, spent a half-century advocating for civil rights and medical equity. In addition to playing a key role in founding Lincoln Community Health Center (which […]
Doctors Who Torture: Medical Ethics at Crossroads
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 […]
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 […]