How Reality Hit Home as a Junior Doctor Resuscitating a Drowned Child

Dr Mohammad S Razai trained at University of Cambridge and is an Academic Clinical Fellow in Primary Care at St George’s University of London. In the blink of an eye, the tide had become too high and the wind too strong. The child, who was playing moments earlier in the sandy devon beach, had disappeared […]

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Acting by Persuasion; Values and Rhetoric in Medical Certificates of Work Incapacity; A Qualitative Document Analysis

by Guri Aarseth When acting as experts for the Norwegian National Insurance Administration (NAV), should the GP first and foremost consider the interest of his/her patient, his/her own professional integrity or the interest of society? Values are present in nearly all texts; a legitimate medical certificate is supposed to be ‘neutral, professional and objective’ – […]

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The Weaponizing of Religion against Healthcare: An Interview with John Fugelsang

Increasingly in the US, elements of religion have crept into medical and political discourse. The Bible has been invoked repeatedly, for instance, in discussion of women’s right to abortion, same sex marriage, adoption, coverage rights, and the list goes on. In today’s MH podcast, Brandy Schillace interviews John Fugelsang, host of Tell Me Everything on […]

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Cinema of Hope and Humanity: Introducing the World of Malayalam Filmmaker Jayaraj

by Khalid Ali, film and media correspondent Medical Humanities will focus on ‘Global Humanities’ as a theme for 2019. Film can be a powerful medium for raising awareness about current global challenges as well as revisiting historical tragedies that befell humanity, as in the first and second World Wars. It gives me great pleasure to […]

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When Pigs Fly Emotional Support Animals, Service Dogs and the Politics of Legitimacy across Species Boundaries

by Justyna Wlodarczyk About a year ago, I attended a lecture by a prominent expert in therapy dogs who used the term “emotional support animal” in his talk, accompanied by an image of a pig on a plane in the PowerPoint presentation. The mere mention of the term was enough to get the audience – […]

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Being Well Together: Human-Animal Collaboration, Companionship and the Promotion of Health and Wellbeing

by Robert Kirk, Neil Pemberton and Tom Quick This research forum is titled Being Well Together: human-animal collaboration, companionship and the promotion of health and wellbeing, It grew out a meeting at the University of Manchester in September 2018, supported by the UK’s Wellcome Trust. We invited academics working in disciplines across the humanities and […]

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The Politics of Female Pain: Women’s Citizenship, Twilight Sleep and the Early Birth Control Movement

by Lauren MacIvor Thompson Thanks for reading “The Politics of Female Pain: Women’s Citizenship, Twilight Sleep, and the Early Birth Control Movement” in this month’s issue of Medical Humanities! If you are interested in the contemporary issues surrounding women’s health, pregnancy, and labor and delivery, this article will help shed some light on how we […]

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Sophistry in American Medicine? Platonic Reflections on Expertise, Influence and the Public’s Health in the Democratic Context

by Evan V Goldstein So long as I maintain this Oath faithfully and without corruption, may it be granted to me to partake of life fully and the practice of my art, gaining the respect of all men for all time. However, should I transgress this Oath and violate it, may the opposite be my […]

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