Hot Topics: Medical Humanities
by Andréa Wakim Early morning rounding,Stressful days working,Rigorous nights studying, Often faced with the questions,How is studying going?Any tips for excelling? My advice to you is this: Fall in love. Fall in love with your free time.Fall in love with your hobbies.Fall in love with brief silence.Fall in love with your happiness. When there is […]
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by Keisha Ray, PhD
This was originally given as part of the plenary session “What about the ‘H’ in ‘ASBH'”? at the 2020 annual meeting of The American Society of Bioethics and Humanities
As many of you may recall, when you are junior bioethicist, like myself, you often get a lot of unsolicited advice from more senior bioethicists.…
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by Annie Janvier, MD, PhD and John D. Lantos MD
The COVID-19 crisis has been compared to war. Providers are being drafted.…
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by Mark Siegler, MD
Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross graduated from the University of Zurich Medical School, did her residency training at several hospitals in New York City, and then did fellowship training in psychiatry at the University of Colorado.…
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by September Williams, MD
FOR SAMA is a documentary film by International Emmy Award winning journalist and film director, Waad Al-Kateab.…
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This post is presented in collaboration with the American Journal of Bioethics. You can read the entire issue by clicking here.…
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by September Williams, MD
ASK DR. RUTH by director Ryan White shows the personal lifestyle of the 90-year-old sex therapist, Dr.…
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by Keisha Ray, Ph.D.
For many LGBTQ people (and many others) June is a month of celebration. June is PRIDE month.…
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by Nathan Carlin, Ph.D.
When I began reading in the history of bioethics, I was struck by the fact that many of the founders of bioethics had theological degrees, which led to a common way of articulating the origins of the field: “Bioethics began in theology, but quickly secularized.”…
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by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.
Doc• splain (/’däk splān) verb. Informal. (of an MD) explaining (something) to someone, typically a PhD, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing
At the 2018 Meeting of the American Society for Bioethics & Humanities, we were treated to two excellent plenary sessions: Jonathan Metzl on gun violence and Despina Kakoudaki on Frankenstein.…
Full ArticleThe Inner Lives of Doctors: Physician Emotion in the Care of the Seriously Ill
Everything I Really Needed to Know to Be a Clinical Ethicist, I Learned From Elisabeth Kübler-Ross*
Fifty Years Later: Reflections on the Work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross M.D.
Recollections of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross at the University of Chicago (1965–70)
Principles of Biomedical Ethics: Marking Its Fortieth Anniversary
Intersectionality in Clinical Medicine: The Need for a Conceptual Framework
Shrinking Poor White Life Spans: Class, Race, and Health Justice
A paradigm for understanding trust and mistrust in medical research: The Community VOICES study
Now is the Time for a Postracial Medicine: Biomedical Research, the National Institutes of Health, and the Perpetuation of Scientific Racism
What are some opinions on the ethics of CRISPR? “Doudna herself recognizes that CRISPR carries with it “great risk….but she warned of the unknown consequences of embryo editing, cautioning researchers to wait to use CRISPR for these ends.”
Full ArticleHow is medical ethics debated in court? “If a Texas court ruling is allowed to stand, the state’s hospitals and doctors will have no room to make end-of-life care decisions based on independent medical ethics or individual conscience.”
Full Article“In the imminent future, patients will start to die because there simply aren’t enough people to care for them. Doctors and nurses will burn out. The most precious resource the U.S. health-care system has in the struggle against COVID-19 isn’t some miracle drug. It’s the expertise of its health-care workers—and they are exhausted.”
Full Article“With all of the tumult surrounding the coronavirus, few people likely noticed that three important figures in bioethics recently died within a month of one another. But us, the deaths of Renée Fox, Charles Bosk, and David Rothman were a major loss.”
Full ArticleTen years ago, Renee Bach left her home in Virginia to set up a charity to help children in Uganda. One of her first moves was to start a blog chronicling her experiences.
Among the most momentous: On a Sunday morning in October 2011, a couple from a village some distance away showed up at Bach’s center carrying a small bundle.
“When I pulled the covering back my eyes widened,” Bach wrote in the blog. “For under the blanket lay a small, but very, very swollen, pale baby girl. Her breaths were frighteningly slow. … The baby’s name is Patricia. She is 9 months old.”
Bach went on to write that Patricia had fallen sick three weeks earlier. But her parents had been unable to find anyone closer to home who could cure her.
Then, wrote Bach, “One of their relatives told them about a ‘hospital’ … with a ‘White Doctor.’ ”
Except Bach was not a doctor.
Full ArticleWASHINGTON — Pound for pound, the deadliest arms of all time are not nuclear but biological. A single gallon of anthrax, if suitably distributed, could end human life on Earth.
Even so, the Trump administration has given scant attention to North Korea’s pursuit of living weapons — a threat that analysts describe as more immediate than its nuclear arms, which Pyongyang and Washington have been discussing for more than six months.
Full ArticleEver since scientists created the powerful gene-editing technique CRISPR, they have braced for the day when it would be used to produce a genetically altered human being. Now, the moment they feared may have come. What’s likely to happen next?
Full ArticleAll over the country, specialized strike teams of doctors are giving hope to families who are desperately searching for a diagnosis.
The medical sleuths have cracked more than a third of the 382 patient cases they’re pursuing, according to a recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Full ArticleWe have long understood, however, that the robustness of the biomedical research enterprise is under constant threat by risks to the security of intellectual property and the integrity of peer review. This knowledge has shaped our existing policies and practices, but these risks are increasing.
Full ArticleIn recent years, however, this practice of appraising researchers by counting their publications has become problematic. This is because an astonishing number of journals that bill themselves as “peer-reviewed” do not, in fact, take the trouble to be so. A tally of journals that an American analytics firm, Cabells, believes to falsely claim to peer-review submissions, amounted, on a recent day, to 8,699—more than double the number of a year ago. A blacklist compiled by other experts is even longer.
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