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Overdiagnosed and overprotected children
There’s been much discussion for years now on whether children are overmedicated for behavioral problems. A very thoughtful report was just published by The Hastings Center: “Troubled Children:...
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Don’t drink and judge: Bitter tastes and moral disgust
Disgust is an emotion experienced – either actually or in the imagination – through the senses. Charles Darwin, for example, wrote: “I am disgusted by the stench and sight of that rotting viscera.”...
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The emotional burdens of patient care
In a recent issue of JAMA, Dr. Michael Stillman writes about the emotional pain of delivering bad news to a patient he has known through the best and worst of times. Earlier in my career, delivering...
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Bruckner on the family, being gay, and AIDS activism
I recently read and very much enjoyed Pascal Bruckner’s newly translated book, Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy (originally published in 2000). Here’s a passage from the chapter “The Fat,...
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Bruckner on the good life, money, and the unequal world of work
Once more, from Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy. This time on our relation to wealth. Why is it American conservatives deplore European social democracy? Could it be that it doesn’t...
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Recommended (online) reading
I’m still on “sabbatical.” Mostly reading. Thinking about what I most want to write about. I know what my interests are — the problem is, I have too many. Meanwhile, here are some blogs I enjoy...
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Guest post: Is the prevalence of depression related to the modern empowerment...
Pierre Fraser is an author, essayist, and (currently) a PhD candidate in sociology at Université Laval. Just as his most recent book (Tous Malades !: Quand l’obsession pour la santé nous rend fous) was...
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On healthism, the social determinants of health, conformity, & embracing the...
It’s always hard to be sure about these things, but I think the reason I decided to take a ‘sabbatical’ from blogging last July was that I was interested in too many seemingly unrelated topics. Writing...
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On healthism, the social determinants of health, conformity, & embracing the...
Continued from part one, where I discussed the first three of my six interests: healthism, medicalization, and psychological and physical conformity. Click on the graphic below to see a larger image....
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On healthism, the social determinants of health, conformity, & embracing the...
Continued from parts one and two, where I defined the terms used in the following diagram of my blogging interests. Click on the graphic for a larger image. If I had written the previous two posts a...
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On healthism, the social determinants of health, conformity, & embracing the...
Continued from parts one, two, and three. A year ago, when I decided to call my declining rate of blogging a ‘sabbatical,’ I wrote down some questions to explore while I took time off to read. How did...
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A new blog on the self
I’ve started another blog called Basic research on the self. My intention is to write there about the social and cultural history of the self, aided by insights from sociology, anthropology, philosophy...
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Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences – July 2014
In the July issue of Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences: A comparison of 19th century public health measures and the contemporary approach to the AIDS pandemic The conflict between...
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The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy — August 2014
The August issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy does not have a specific theme. The nine articles address a number of quite interesting issues, among them: How existential psychotherapy can...
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RN #3: Health news: Exercise and depression. Aspirin for primary prevention....
Reading Notes #3: Some articles of interest I’ve come across while reading NEJM and JAMA. These items all fall into the category of health news. Bulleted titles in the following list link to the...
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Jamais vu and the hippocampus as GPS
I always thought the main function of the hippocampus was to convert short-term memory into long-term memory. It’s one of the first regions of the brain damaged by Alzheimer’s. If your spouse can’t...
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