While 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.
How 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.
In 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.
Tell me, doctors, are you a specialist or a GP? Or sometimes they say “or just a GP?” But of course we are specialists. And our specialty, like any other, has certain advantages and certain disadvantages. The money is good, but you have to work three times as hard for it. But you people know all about that.
This was hard to watch, but well worth it. The program talks to four families who lost a parent. Two military families – one husband who died in action, the other a returning vet who committed suicide. A firefighter who had a heart attack while on the job. And a mother who died of breast cancer. I can imagine that watching this program as a family would help children and parents talk about their feelings and help children realize they’re not alone.
Source: The Insider The current emotional polarization around health care reform is not so much about specific issues – rising medical costs, reprehensible insurance industry practices, the number of uninsured. It reflects a deep division in American culture that began in the sixties. Forty years after Woodstock, it’s clear that a major shift happened in…
Health care reform Wyden-Bennett plan, Fundamental Democrat/Republican differences, Gawande on building from what we have) The Medical profession (Stress vs. balance for doctors, Doctors’ Diaries on NOVA) Health care reform Last week’s figures on cost and coverage from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shifted attention to those health care reform initiatives that are less costly….
A few more things about Bazian, the company that provides the evidence-based medicine (EBM) analysis used by Behind the Headlines. (Bazian, BTW, is named after the 18th century mathematician Thomas Bayes, as in Bayesian probability.) Those who work at Bazian call themselves evidologists. “Evidology aggregates, filters and synthesizes the entire universe of research about a…
