Essential(ist) medicine: promoting social explanations for racial variation in biomedical research [read the article summary] Iliya Gutin Extraordinary minds, impossible choices: mental health, special skills and television Rebecca C Beirne How The Fault in Our Stars illuminates four themes of the Adolescent End of Life Narrative [read the article summary] Anna Obergfell Kirkman, Jane A […]
Tag: Health Humanities
Death and Dying, Italian Style
Valeria Golino, Italian actress and director, talks about assisted suicide and end of life decisions in her films ‘Honey’ and ‘Euphoria’. In this podcast Valeria Golino talks about end of life issues; assisted suicide, the common practice of some Italian people withholding the true diagnosis of terminal illness from their affected relatives, and doctor-patient relationships […]
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 […]
Matthew Morgan’s Critical Finds Meaning in Intensive Care Medicine
Review by Amitha Kalaichandran, M.D. The intensive care unit (ICU) in any hospital is the most high-tech, and the least interactive, in terms of doctors and patients. I often think back to two patients in the pediatric ICU—one who had a recurrence of metastatic cancer resulting in multi-organ failure, and for which every last intervention […]
A Bird’s Revenge
The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent, Australia, 2018) Review by Khalid Ali, film and media correspondent Recently the presence of women film-makers is becoming more prominent and influential in international film circuits. The Sundance Film Festival London 2019 (https://spotlight.picturehouses.com/sundance-film-festival-2019-london/sundance-film-festival-19-london-full-programme/) continues the trend of showcasing the best of world cinema made by talented women with compelling stories to […]
Enchanting Robots: Intimacy, Magic, and Technology by Maciej Musiał
Review by Sue Smith Enchanting Robots: Intimacy, Magic, and Technology is part of the book series, Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI, edited by Kathleen Richardson, Cathrine Hasse and Teresa Heffernan, and is written by Polish academic, Maciej Musiał. In Enchanting Robots Musiał discusses ‘magic’ and ‘magical thinking’ in order to critically assess […]
When Bodies Think: Panpsychism, Pluralism, Biopolitics
Article Summary by Brandy Schillace In today’s preview, we hear from Dr Martin Savransky, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths University of London. His article, which will appear in our June special issue, explores calls for more participatory forms of medicine and healthcare under what might be described as the ’biopolitical problematic.’ Savransky defines this problematic as […]
History Lessons: Immigration, the NHS, and Fear of the Other
EIC Brandy Schillace interviews Professor Roberta Bivins, Centre for the History of Medicine Department of History, University of Warwick. Since 2015, Dr. Bivins and her colleagues have been asking what the NHS means to people in Britain, and how it came to have such emotional and political resonance. She also recently finished Contagious Communities, a […]
The Sadness is Always There
Review by Professor Robert Abrams, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York ‘This Shaking Keeps Me Steady’ directed by Shehrezad Maher, India, 2018 Showing in the London Indian Film Festival (http://londonindianfilmfestival.co.uk/) In the film, ‘This shaking keeps me steady’ the deep emotion and dreams stirred by traumatic scenes are sharply juxtaposed with acting, which is presented as […]
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 […]