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Suicide among veterans is an “absolute crisis”
According to the Times, 347 soldiers were killed last year, and 381 committed suicide. Legislation to provide funds for the mental health of military personnel and veterans was removed from a...
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Atul Gawande: Modern death and dying
An article in The New Yorker by Atul Gawande on how modern clinical medicine has turned death and dying into an experience we would not wish on our enemies. This is so much in need of being said. And...
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I am saddened by the death of Tony Judt
I feel as if I’ve been on a death watch for Tony Judt all year. In his January essay, “Night,” in The New York Review of Books, he discussed his 2008 diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS),...
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Tony Judt — continued
More tributes to Tony Judt following his death on Friday. Tony Judt, Historian And Author, Dies At 62 (NPR) Focuses on the controversy over Judt’s position on Israel. “I think he was one of the most...
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Palliative care: Lost and recovered
Here’s an excerpt from the third and last part of the interview with me by Dr. Lisa Marcucci at Inside Surgery. The question asked for a little known fact from the history of medicine. Easing the pain...
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Knowing when you’ll die: Tony Judt’s last interview
Tony Judt died on August 6. He had been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in September of 2008. Over the years he had been both guest and guest host on the Charlie Rose show. Rose interviewed...
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Should grief be labeled and treated as depression?
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is in the process of revising the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) – the psychiatrist’s bible. Its last incarnation — known as DSM...
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Grey’s Anatomy donates a body to medicine
While studying anatomy, I once spent a day with a cadaver whose stomach — normally located in the abdomen below the rib cage — had migrated up through the diaphragm and was now located behind the ribs....
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Tony Judt lives on
I miss Tony Judt. As I read the news every day, I speculate on what he would have to say. I was thinking of him during the mid-term elections as I listened to blatant misinformation about the...
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Old age and the limitations of a healthy lifestyle
A nice op-ed in the NY Times touches on our belief that living a healthy lifestyle guarantees a long and able-bodied life. The author, Susan Jacoby, speaks specifically to the issue of dementia and...
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Misc Links 1/9/11
Complete text of articles in The Lancet require free registration. Deadly Images (Slate) Interview with author of “About To Die: How News Images Move the Public.” Images of the dead push viewers away,...
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Misc Links 1/13/11
GM chickens created that could prevent the spread of bird flu (Guardian) Genetically modified chickens can still catch the flu, but their “decoy” molecules confuse the replication cycle of viruses....
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The absurdity of widowhood
The New Yorker published a beautiful piece by Joyce Carol Oates on the death of her husband, Raymond Smith. Oates and Smith, who had been married 48 years, were in a car accident three years ago. The...
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Decisions about CPR
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...
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Baby RB, Baby Isaiah, Baby Joseph
These days, both the oldest and the youngest die in hospitals. Baby RB suffered from a rare subtype of a genetic neuromuscular condition, congenital myasthenic syndrome, and spent his entire life – he...
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What is healthism? (part two)
In part one of this post I explained the most common meaning of healthism (an excessive preoccupation with healthy lifestyles and feeling personally responsible for our health) and described an...
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