Hot Topics: Medical Humanities

Published Articles (1)

American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 16 Issue 10 - Oct 2016

Healing Without Waging War: Beyond Military Metaphors in Medicine and HIV Cure Research Jing-Bao Nie, Adam Gilbertson, Malcolm de Roubaix, Ciara Staunton, Anton van Niekerk, Joseph D. Tucker & Stuart Rennie

News (7)

July 25, 2017 9:00 am

US defense agencies grapple with gene drives (Nature)

The JASONs, a group of elite scientists that advises the US government on national security, has weighed in on issues ranging from cyber security to renewing America’s nuclear arsenal. But at a meeting in June, the secretive group took stock of a new threat: gene drives, a genetic-engineering technology that can swiftly spread modifications through entire populations and could help vanquish malaria-spreading mosquitoes.

June 14, 2017 9:00 am

Heaven over hospital: Dying girl, age 5, makes a choice (CNN)

Julianna Snow is dying of an incurable disease. She’s stable at the moment, but any germ that comes her way, even just the common cold virus, could kill her. She’s told her parents that the next time this happens, she wants to die at home instead of going to the hospital for treatment. If Julianna were an adult, there would be no debate about her case: She would get to decide when to say “enough” to medical care and be allowed to die. But Julianna is 5 years old. Should her parents have let her know how grave her situation is? Should they have asked her about her end-of-life wishes? And now that those wishes are known, should her parents heed them?
June 9, 2017 9:00 am

How Should Physicians Respond When the Best Treatment for an Individual Patient Conflicts with Practice Guidelines about the Use of a Limited Resource? (AMA Journal of Ethics)

Physicians might not be able to find a best solution or process for resolving more difficult ethical dilemmas, such as how they should best distribute limited resources. They could, however, pursue a path that most respects and benefits their patients and themselves.

May 18, 2017 9:00 am

From Silence into Language: Questioning the Power of Physician Illness Narratives (AMA Journal of Ethics)

Physicians’ narratives of their own experiences of illness can be a kind of empathic bridge across the divide between a professional healer and a sick patient. This essay considers ways in which physicians’ narratives of their own and family members’ experiences of cancer shape encounters with patients and patients’ experiences of illness.

February 15, 2017 9:00 am

This stereotype is killing black children (Washington Post)

USA Swimming, the nation’s organizing body for the sport, has some 337,000 members — of whom only 1.3 percent are black. Today, nearly 60 years after the abolishment of Jim Crow laws that kept African Americans from pools and safe swimming places, many children still never get the chance to swim.

January 30, 2017 9:00 am

Journals invite too few women to referee (Nature)

Using a large data set that includes the genders and ages of authors and reviewers from 2012 to 2015 for the journals of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), we show that women were used less as reviewers than expected (on the basis of their proportion of membership of the society and as published authors in AGU journals). The bias is a result of authors and editors, especially male ones, suggesting women as reviewers less often, and a slightly higher decline rate among women in each age group when asked.

January 17, 2017 9:00 am

The Life of a Disabled Child, From Taunts to Hate Crimes (The New York Times)

Since the days when my mother wouldn’t let my older brother go out to play stickball if I wasn’t with him, there’s been a lot of progress in attitudes toward those we now call developmentally or intellectually challenged.