Category Archives: Arts & Media

What is healthism? (part two)

Apple and stethoscopeOur financially and professionally entrenched system of medical care has a vested interest in maintaining an understanding of health that preserves the status quo. Part of the power of our biomedical culture is that its contingency – the very real possibility that it could be different — is ordinarily invisible to us. What would it take to imagine a widely shared understanding of health that called for dramatic changes not only in how our health care needs are met, but in the conditions under which we live our lives? This is the question that I hope an examination of healthism will provoke.

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The Dreams of the Founders of Family Medicine

Marcus Welby MD on the phoneWhile they were mindful of and grateful for the powerful advances in medicine, they believed that social and economic conditions which influenced the life of a person and a community had a greater impact on a person’s life and health than did the power and might of all of medicine.

They believed that medicine was a profession that involved more than a technical set of skills and a high income. They accepted the responsibility of caring for the whole person; mind, body and soul.

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Is a liberal arts education good preparation for being a doctor?

Dr. Joel AngLiterature, fine art, poetry, music serve to remind overworked clinicians that they are part of a timeless tradition of healing whole human beings, who present in all their magnificence and complexity. Also, that physicians themselves participate in the tradition of physicians as humanists. Perhaps that’s why a liberal arts education – in my opinion – makes an important contribution to the practice of medicine today.

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What gets lost in the bureaucratization of medicine

Medical practice as an artThe bureaucratization of medicine with increasingly complex rules, codes, algorithms, prompts, bylaws, schedules, and administrative structure is leaving its mark, but medicine at its fundamental is still about suffering, healing, and comforting; it is about individuals; it is about relationships and trust; it is about stories.

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Why do we feel bad about the way we look?

Heidi Montag cultural texts promoting cosmetic surgeryHow did ordinary women and men with ordinary lives and ordinary bodies learn that they need plastic? The answer: the plastic ideological complex, a set of cultural texts that are both highly contested and yet tightly on message. It is itself so ubiquitous that it might even be described as hegemonic. In other words, the “need” for cosmetic procedures is impossible to avoid. Through advertising and TV shows, movies and magazines, we learn to want cosmetic intervention in our aging faces and imperfect bodies. This need is now so firmly implanted in our cultural psyche that it has become “common sense” to embrace cosmetic procedures.

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Never Let Me Go: Exploitation of the young by the old

Never let me goThe lackeys of capitalism compete to become employee of the month, just as the donors of Never Let Me Go take a pride in their donations. In both cases, the system has indoctrinated them so successfully that they’ve ended up perfectly willing to accept their part in an apparently unalterable scheme of things.

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What the Internet does to the mind and self

Internet addictionWhat we live in is not the age of the extended mind but the age of the inverted self. The things that have usually lived in the darker recesses or mad corners of our mind—sexual obsessions and conspiracy theories, paranoid fixations and fetishes—are now out there: you click once and you can read about the Kennedy autopsy or the Nazi salute or hog-tied Swedish flight attendants. But things that were once external and subject to the social rules of caution and embarrassment—above all, our interactions with other people—are now easily internalized, made to feel like mere workings of the id left on its own.

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Exploiting vanity for a good cause

From drugs to mugs[N]ew anti-drug campaign may succeed where others have failed, grabbing teens’ attentions by appealing to their vanity. “The thinking is that this will give kids a tangible image of what can happen if they get involved in using hard drugs,” [Deputy Bret] King says. “We did want to appeal to their sense of vanity. It’s less abstract than telling someone they’ll get lung cancer many years down the line. This is something you can actually see right now.”

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Misc Links 12/31/10

Doctors behaving badlyReal Life Among the Old Old (NYT)
To believe 90 is the new 50 is a fantasy that fails to distinguish between hope and reasonable expectation

FoodPolitics catches up: USDA’s meat labeling (Food Politics)
Meat producers greatly prefer that you remain ignorant of the amount of fat and calories meat contains

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Wikileaks, nerd supremacy, anarchy, dictatorship, and democracy

The information machineThe flip side of responsibly held secrets … is trust. A perfectly open world, without secrets, would be a world without the need for trust, and therefore a world without trust. What a sad sterile place that would be: A perfect world for machines.

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Misc Links 12/22/10

Machine moves a computer punch-cardThe Hazards of Nerd Supremacy: The Case of WikiLeaks (Atlantic)
Substantial, thought-provoking essay by philosopher of the information age, Jaron Lanier

Secrecy May Be Unnecessary for Placebo Effect (WebMD)
Ted Kaptchuk trial involved 80 IBS patients. “There may be significant benefit to the very performance of medical ritual.”

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Misc Links 12/20/10

DonutsA reversal on carbs (LA Times)
The country’s big low-fat message backfired. The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today.

Mental Health Needs Seen Growing at Colleges (NYT)
70s students saw college counselors for existential crisis: Who am I? “Now they’re bringing in life stories involving extensive trauma, a history of serious mental illness, eating disorders, self-injury, alcohol and other drug use.”

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Misc Links 12/18/10

The U-bend of lifeThe U-bend of life: Why, beyond middle age, people get happier as they get older (Economist)
Life improves after the stressful middle years. Interesting comments
Can Congress Force You to Be Healthy? (NYT)
A good point or the wrong question? Virginia judge’s ruling could prove irresistible to the Supreme Court

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Grey’s Anatomy donates a body to medicine

Grey's Anatomy Meredith Cristina GgeorgeIn one of the best scenes of the episode, medical professionals are standing by in the operating room, ready to receive the organs that are about to be removed. Chief Resident Miranda Bailey — my favorite character (played by Chandra Wilson) — is emotionally distraught at the loss of George. She asks for information about the destination of the eyes, the liver, the heart. The details of the organ donations – the benefits they will bring to the particular children and adults who have been waiting and hoping for this opportunity – are quite moving.

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Nurse anesthetists sing “Waking up is hard to do”

The LaryngospasmsA must view, for the sheer fun and pleasure of it! Thanks to Roberta, for pointing this out to me, and to Not Totally Rad (a radiologist’s blog) for posting it.

The Laryngospasms (the Spasms, for short) are a group of nurse anesthetists who can really sing. More of their music videos are available on their website.

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Once in a lifetime: Marcus Welby and David Bryne

Talking HeadsMarcus Welby was not necessarily the inspiration here, of course. Alienation – and the dissatisfaction that comes with a midlife crisis — pervaded the zeitgeist in the seventies.

Whatever happened to alienation, anyway? Perhaps it fell along with the Berlin Wall. Or succumbed to Prozac.

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