A less pithy title – and what I really mean – would be “Imagine a future where aesthetic cosmetic surgery wasn’t motivated by the images of celebrities/advertising/porn and by the dissatisfaction with normal bodies that these images create.”
In the concluding chapter of her new book, American Plastic: Boob Jobs, Credit Cards, and the Quest for Perfection
61-year-old woman gives birth to her own grandchild, and so what? (Practical Ethics)
The news is that it’s not news. Euthanasia, divorce, same sex marriage, in vitro fertilization — the common perception of these practices has changed radically in the last 30 years. Comments from Italian bioethicist.
Creeping sickness: Our epidemic of diagnosis (New Scientist)
Review of H. Gilbert Welch’s new book, Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health
Thaddeus Pope quotes this sentence from a 1988 letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
“It seems we have lost sight of the difference between patients who die because their hearts stop and patients whose hearts stop because they are dying.”
Today we no longer stop to make that distinction.
Kristina describes Victoria as “Possibly the most annoyingly loud, optimistic, cheerful person you will ever encounter. With an incredibly high-pitched, overly exaggerated Southern accent and a specialty in church music, she is the poster child for America.” Fortunately, I missed the episode of American Idol on which Victoria appeared and was eliminated.
Most people experience times when as much as it’s blindingly obvious a problem is not theirs alone, it’s up to them alone to fix it – and a pill is often the quickest or only means.
That’s exactly what Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan wanted us to believe. “There’s no such thing as society.” Unfortunately, many medical distorders do have social, not biological causes. Like poverty.
[T]he government and private insurers had begun a concerted effort to contain the escalating cost of health care by fiat. The kindly family doctor was diminished, downgraded, and de-professionalized to a “provider,” a bland descriptor on a clerk’s requisition form. Even worse, New York State’s Medicaid, insuring the indigent, classified me as a “vendor,” a term which sent me into orbit then, and which today still rankles. Hemmed in by profession-specific price controls, reams of restrictive regulations, heavy-handed threats of federal penalties and expulsion from Medicare participation for suspected infractions, I became disheartened.
In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate. Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.
History of Modesty, Part 2 (Patient Modesty & Privacy Concerns)
Part two of my post on the history of patient modesty is up as a guest post on the Patient Modesty blog. I discuss how, in the 19th century, doctors got patients to accept a much more invasive physical exam than what they were used to.
Greater Germ Exposure Cuts Asthma Risk (WSJ)
Another example of the hygiene hypothesis. Children living on farms have a lower risk of asthma than children who don’t because they are surrounded by a greater variety of germs. Key is exposure to diversity of germs, not just more of them. “You have to have microbes that educate the immune system. But you have to have the right ones.”
I once walked out of a surgical residency because I didn’t like the way they bullied and yelled at me but not everyone would do that. Students are exposed to brutal violence in ER rooms, are underpaid, and basically end up suffering from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. But no one comes to talk to you and you’re left on your own.
Dr. Ores decided against a career in surgery and now treats low-income patients in New York City. “I feel I can actually help people. So much is out of your control in the ER room or operating theatre.”
TV presenter Cerrie Burnell: ‘I don’t care if you are offended’ (Guardian)
Born without a right forearm, Burnell now sings, dances, and presents on children’s show. Some parents objected (it frightened their kids). Others suggested long sleeves. “Ultimately, I don’t care if you’re offended.”
Joyce Carol Oates’s Widow’s Lament (NYT)
“A Widow’s Story: A Memoir.” She “has assembled a book more painfully self-revelatory than anything Oates the fiction writer or critic has ever dared to produce.” Touches on the power balance between artist and spouse.
They meant to be reconstructive surgeons, they meant to fix people after horrific accidents or cancer, and they started doing some boob jobs on the side and it started to eat up more and more of their practice because it was so lucrative. They want to send their kids to nice schools, they have mortgages, they have family, and you could see that they felt a little bit helpless as well. It wasn’t what they meant to do. They seemed just as much products of the system as the middle-aged women going in for a facelift or boob job. They were hoping for a better future.
A Soft Spot for Circuitry (NYT)
Paro the seal, a sociable robot, accomplishes its lifelike interaction through hidden sensors that monitor sound, light, temperature and touch. Sociable robots now used as therapy for the elderly. “We as a species have to learn how to deal with this new range of synthetic emotions that we’re experiencing — synthetic in the sense that they’re emanating from a manufactured object.”
If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn’t everyone in Asia have a headache? (Guardian)
History of Japanese discovery of the fifth taste, ‘umami’ (translated ‘savoury,’ ‘deliciousness’) and the manufacture of MSG. How MSG got a bad reputation in the US and how the food industry fought back. Fascinating.
Because China has never had a humanist revolution, sex and marriage have always been relatively divorced. That is why many Asian cultures have an immensely commercialised and categorised [sex industry]. … [I]f a husband is a man of means, and has a significant income, then he can take on a second wife without violating his obligation to his first wife. … This does not mean that the Chinese are incapable of love, it means that romantic love competes with that transactional element in a society where people are insecure because their individual interests are not institutionally protected.
House votes to defund Planned Parenthood, national health-care law (WaPost)
In votes on amendments to federal spending bill, House Republicans block federal funding of Planned Parenthood and cut off funds to implement health care law. Republican congresswoman took the floor to relate her abortion.
The Fact-Free Far Right: Laura Ingraham’s Lies are Dangerous to Our Health (RH Reality Check)
Fox: Planned Parenthood makes most of its money from abortions. Fact: It’s 15% and not federally funded. PP’s main services: contraceptive delivery, testing/treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, screening for cervical and breast cancer
FDA Report: Alarming Amounts of “Superbugs” in Supermarkets (Bnet)
Superbugs (bacteria resistant to antibiotics) in meat is a much more common and widespread problem than anyone would like to admit, according to federal government report. Chicken breasts, ground turkey, ground beef and pork chops tested.
Superbugs in Canadian chicken? Yes, and US too (Wired)
15% of bacteria on chicken breasts and ground turkey are resistant to 4 or more classes of antibiotics. Drug-resistant bacteria in food won’t diminish until we reduce the amount of drugs that food animals receive while they are raised.
History of Patient Modesty – Part 1: How Bodily Exposure Went from Unacceptable to Required (Patient Modesty & Privacy Concerns)
I have a guest post today on the #1 medical privacy blog. Part one describes what medicine used to be like before modern, anatomically-based theories of disease. Well into the 19th century, doctors did not expect patients to remove their clothes.
U.S. Raises Value of a Life, and Businesses Fear Impact (NYT)
How much should the government spend to prevent a single death? Environmental, consumer, and worker protection standards have been going up, despite protests from business.
