Sunday, November 7, 2021
Wednesday, November 3, 2021
Humanist of the Year
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Wednesday, October 27, 2021
How to Talk to a Science Denier | Center for Inquiry
A generation ago, the flat-earther at the end of the bar or the anti-evolutionist in front of a congregation could be ignored. But today's science deniers—climate change skeptics and Covid anti-vaxxers—threaten all of us: solutions to both global catastrophes require the public's collective buy-in. Drawing on the latest academic research and his own experience speaking with those doubtful of established facts—including at a recent Flat Earth convention in Denver—McIntyre outlines the common themes and psychological roots of science denialism, illustrating a throughline from the disinformation campaigns created by tobacco companies in the 1950s to today's climate deniers, anti-vaxxers and Covid-deniers. Importantly, he also offers tools, techniques, and reasoning strategies that are effective in mitigating the effects of scientific disinformation. When science denial becomes a public health threat, all of us—laypeople and experts alike—have a responsibility to help combat it
https://centerforinquiry.org/video/how-to-talk-to-a-science-denier/
https://centerforinquiry.org/video/how-to-talk-to-a-science-denier/
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Public health v. “liberty”
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Monday, October 18, 2021
Public Health Is in Crisis
Threats, Resignations and 100 New Laws: Why Public Health Is in Crisis
An examination of hundreds of health departments around the country shows that the nation may be less prepared for the next pandemic than it was for the current one.
PORT ANGELES, Wash. — As she leaves work, Dr. Allison Berry keeps a vigilant eye on her rearview mirror, watching the vehicles around her, weighing if she needs to take a more circuitous route home. She must make sure nobody finds out where she lives.
When the pandemic first hit the northern edge of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, Dr. Berry was a popular family physician and local health officer, trained in biostatistics and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. She processed Covid-19 test kits in her garage and delivered supplies to people in quarantine, leading a mobilization that kept her counties with some of the fewest deaths in the nation.
But this summer, as a Delta variant wave pushed case numbers to alarming levels, Dr. Berry announced a mask mandate. In September, she ordered vaccination requirements for indoor dining.
By then, to many in the community, the enemy was not the virus. It was her.
Dr. Berry should be attacked "on sight," one resident wrote online. Someone else suggested bringing back public hangings. "Dr. Berry, we are coming for you," a man warned at a public meeting. An angry crowd swarmed into the courthouse during a briefing on the Covid-19 response one day, looking for her, and protesters also showed up at her house, until they learned that Dr. Berry was no longer living there... (continues)
An examination of hundreds of health departments around the country shows that the nation may be less prepared for the next pandemic than it was for the current one.
PORT ANGELES, Wash. — As she leaves work, Dr. Allison Berry keeps a vigilant eye on her rearview mirror, watching the vehicles around her, weighing if she needs to take a more circuitous route home. She must make sure nobody finds out where she lives.
When the pandemic first hit the northern edge of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, Dr. Berry was a popular family physician and local health officer, trained in biostatistics and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. She processed Covid-19 test kits in her garage and delivered supplies to people in quarantine, leading a mobilization that kept her counties with some of the fewest deaths in the nation.
But this summer, as a Delta variant wave pushed case numbers to alarming levels, Dr. Berry announced a mask mandate. In September, she ordered vaccination requirements for indoor dining.
By then, to many in the community, the enemy was not the virus. It was her.
Dr. Berry should be attacked "on sight," one resident wrote online. Someone else suggested bringing back public hangings. "Dr. Berry, we are coming for you," a man warned at a public meeting. An angry crowd swarmed into the courthouse during a briefing on the Covid-19 response one day, looking for her, and protesters also showed up at her house, until they learned that Dr. Berry was no longer living there... (continues)
Sunday, October 17, 2021
Dr. Eric Cassell, Bioethicist Who Put the Patient First, Dies at 93
Dr. Eric Cassell, Bioethicist Who Put the Patient First, Dies at 93
"the spoken language is the most important tool in medicine"
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/science/eric-cassell-dead.html?referringSource=articleShare
"the spoken language is the most important tool in medicine"
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/science/eric-cassell-dead.html?referringSource=articleShare
Friday, October 15, 2021
Public Health Ethics
At its core, public health is concerned with promoting and protecting the health of populations, broadly understood. Learn more about Public Health Ethics here: https://t.co/1e8SLW7src
(https://twitter.com/dailySEP/status/1448924328712708098?s=02)
(https://twitter.com/dailySEP/status/1448924328712708098?s=02)
Sunday, October 10, 2021
Anti-vaccine chiropractors rising force of misinformation
Anti-vaccine chiropractors rising force of misinformation
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-10-09/anti-vaccine-chiropractors-rising-force-of-misinformation
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-10-09/anti-vaccine-chiropractors-rising-force-of-misinformation
Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu
👣Solvitur ambulando
💭Sapere aude
Wednesday, October 6, 2021
‘You’re Dying,’ I Told My Patient. I Wish I Hadn’t.
Why a patient in denial is such a challenge for doctors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/06/opinion/doctor-patient-death-truth.html?smid=em-share
My patient's chart was brief. A diagnosis of colon cancer that might have been cured had he not disappeared from medical care to return, nearly a year later, with cancer so advanced that it had torn through his intestines.
Colleagues at the hospital had called him to schedule appointments, to get follow-up and to start chemotherapy, but he never responded. Now he was back, but there was nothing the surgeons could fix, and so he would remain in the intensive care unit until his death.
When he arrived in our unit one night last winter, his cheeks were gaunt, his body wasted and abdomen protruding. He was also angry. As I remember the events of that night, as soon as the doctors in training and I gathered at his bedside to explain his prognosis, he lashed out. There was nothing wrong with him, he insisted. All he wanted was for us to treat his pain so that he could go home. He had things to do: a game to watch on television later that night.
As a critical care doctor, I am familiar with denial in its many permutations. I know how it feels to sit at a bedside and in windowless conference rooms, talking with families who cannot or will not let themselves acknowledge what is unfolding in front of them. We learn language to show that we are on their side, while also making it clear that things are not going to be OK. "I wish that the antibiotics were helping, but I worry that your loved one is dying," we say...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/06/opinion/doctor-patient-death-truth.html?smid=em-share
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Habit de-forming, for health and happiness
Harvard Center for Health and Happiness (@HarvardCenterHH) tweeted:
"All habits need to be re-examined from time to time."
This @GreaterGoodSC podcast examines the practice of temporarily abstaining from something you find enjoyable. Featuring @michaelpollan & Dr. @DunnHappyLab. https://t.co/bH0Remkn1e https://t.co/LNmO6oJ7DQ
(https://twitter.com/HarvardCenterHH/status/1418658460753858560?s=02)
Sunday, July 25, 2021
1st Black woman to earn a medical degree in the US
Overlooked No More: Rebecca Lee Crumpler, Who Battled Prejudice in Medicine
As the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, she persevered to make care accessible to women and Black communities, regardless of their ability to pay.
For more than 125 years, people trampled — unknowingly — across the grass where Rebecca Lee Crumpler rests in peace alongside her husband, Arthur, at Fairview Cemetery in Boston.
Her burial plot was devoid of a gravestone even though she held a unique distinction: She was the first Black woman to receive a medical degree in the United States.
It would take more than a century, from her death in 1895 until last year, for Crumpler to be given proper recognition by a group of Black historians and physicians. Were it not for them, she might still be languishing in anonymity... nyt
As the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, she persevered to make care accessible to women and Black communities, regardless of their ability to pay.
This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
For more than 125 years, people trampled — unknowingly — across the grass where Rebecca Lee Crumpler rests in peace alongside her husband, Arthur, at Fairview Cemetery in Boston.
Her burial plot was devoid of a gravestone even though she held a unique distinction: She was the first Black woman to receive a medical degree in the United States.
It would take more than a century, from her death in 1895 until last year, for Crumpler to be given proper recognition by a group of Black historians and physicians. Were it not for them, she might still be languishing in anonymity... nyt
Sunday, June 6, 2021
What the Covid Rookies Saw
As the coronavirus tore through New York, a group of medical students graduated early to help the hospitals under siege and found courage they didn’t know they had.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/opinion/covid-new-doctors-healthcare-workers.html?smid=em-share
Alzheimer’s Drug Poses a Dilemma for the F.D.A.
If the agency approves it, aducanumab would be the first new Alzheimer’s treatment since 2003. Patients are desperate for new options, but some scientists say there isn’t enough evidence it works.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/health/alzheimers-aducanumab-fda.html?smid=em-share
Thursday, June 3, 2021
‘I Had Never Faced the Reality of Death’: A Surgeon Becomes a Patient
Infected early in the pandemic, Dr. Tomoaki Kato, a renowned transplant surgeon, was soon on life support, and one of the sickest patients in his own hospital.
==
Early in the pandemic, as hospitals in New York began postponing operations to make way for the flood of Covid-19 cases, Dr. Tomoaki Kato continued to perform surgery. Patients still needed liver transplants, and some were too sick to wait.
At 56, Dr. Kato was healthy and exceptionally fit. He had run the New York City Marathon seven times, and he specialized in operations that were also marathons, lasting 12 or 16 or 20 hours. He was renowned for surgical innovations, deft hands and sheer stamina. At NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, where he was the surgical director of adult and pediatric liver and intestinal transplantation, his boss has called him “our Michael Jordan.”
Dr. Kato became ill with Covid-19 in March 2020.
“I was in a denial situation,” he said. “I thought I was going to be fine.”
But he soon became one of the sickest patients in his own hospital, dependent on a ventilator and other machines to pump oxygen into his bloodstream and do the work of his failing kidneys. He came close to death “many, many times,” according to Dr. Marcus R. Pereira, who oversaw Dr. Kato’s care and is the medical director of the center’s infectious disease program for transplant recipients...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/health/covid-19-diagnosis-surgeon.html?smid=em-share
Sunday, May 16, 2021
How Humanity Gave Itself an Extra Life
How Humanity Gave Itself an Extra Life
...How did this great doubling of the human life span happen? When the history textbooks do touch on the subject of improving health, they often nod to three critical breakthroughs, all of them presented as triumphs of the scientific method: vaccines, germ theory and antibiotics. But the real story is far more complicated. Those breakthroughs might have been initiated by scientists, but it took the work of activists and public intellectuals and legal reformers to bring their benefits to everyday people. From this perspective, the doubling of human life span is an achievement that is closer to something like universal suffrage or the abolition of slavery: progress that required new social movements, new forms of persuasion and new kinds of public institutions to take root. And it required lifestyle changes that ran throughout all echelons of society: washing hands, quitting smoking, getting vaccinated, wearing masks during a pandemic...
Steven Johnson
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/magazine/global-life-span.html?referringSource=articleShare
Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu
👣Solvitur ambulando
💭Sapere aude
America is Failing Its Moral Test on Vaccines
Vaccinating the world is possible. The United States should lead the way.
The United States is well on its way to protecting Americans from the coronavirus. It's time to help the rest of the world. By marshaling this nation's vast resources to produce and distribute enough vaccines to meet global demand, the United States would act in keeping with the nation's best traditions and highest aspirations while advancing its geopolitical and economic interests. It is a moment of both obligation and opportunity.
Unfortunately, instead of a bold, comprehensive strategy to vaccinate the world as quickly as possible, the Biden administration has thus far made a string of tactical decisions: donating millions of doses to countries in need, signaling its support for patent waivers that might expedite vaccine production efforts and nudging two companies — Merck and Johnson & Johnson — to collaborate on increasing supply. These are good steps, but they are not nearly sufficient to meet the moment. The United States and the rest of the world's wealthiest nations are facing a great moral challenge.
Covax, the World Health Organization's initiative to pool vaccine resources, remains profoundly underfunded and has failed to meet even its modest target of vaccinating one-fifth of the population in the Global South. Without a major course correction, the rest of the world will have to wait until 2023 or later for large-scale vaccination initiatives like the one underway in the United States. The consequences of this disparity are expected to be severe. Hundreds of thousands more people will get sick and die from a disease that is now preventable with a vaccine. The global economy will contract by trillions of dollars, according to the International Chamber of Commerce, and tens of millions of people will plummet into extreme poverty as the virus continues to fester and evolve in the world's more vulnerable reaches.
As global hunger rises and global life expectancy falls, instability will prevail. Already, Colombia is mired in deadly protests over the pandemic's economic fallout. India is facing its gravest humanitarian catastrophe in a generation. As the United Nations has warned, a similar crisis in Syria would be catastrophic...
Unfortunately, instead of a bold, comprehensive strategy to vaccinate the world as quickly as possible, the Biden administration has thus far made a string of tactical decisions: donating millions of doses to countries in need, signaling its support for patent waivers that might expedite vaccine production efforts and nudging two companies — Merck and Johnson & Johnson — to collaborate on increasing supply. These are good steps, but they are not nearly sufficient to meet the moment. The United States and the rest of the world's wealthiest nations are facing a great moral challenge.
Covax, the World Health Organization's initiative to pool vaccine resources, remains profoundly underfunded and has failed to meet even its modest target of vaccinating one-fifth of the population in the Global South. Without a major course correction, the rest of the world will have to wait until 2023 or later for large-scale vaccination initiatives like the one underway in the United States. The consequences of this disparity are expected to be severe. Hundreds of thousands more people will get sick and die from a disease that is now preventable with a vaccine. The global economy will contract by trillions of dollars, according to the International Chamber of Commerce, and tens of millions of people will plummet into extreme poverty as the virus continues to fester and evolve in the world's more vulnerable reaches.
As global hunger rises and global life expectancy falls, instability will prevail. Already, Colombia is mired in deadly protests over the pandemic's economic fallout. India is facing its gravest humanitarian catastrophe in a generation. As the United Nations has warned, a similar crisis in Syria would be catastrophic...
Wednesday, May 5, 2021
"a moral and epidemiological failure"
As Covid Ravages Poorer Countries, Rich Nations Spring Back to Life
Despite early vows, the developed world has done little to promote global vaccination, in what analysts call both a moral and epidemiological failure.
Despite early vows, the developed world has done little to promote global vaccination, in what analysts call both a moral and epidemiological failure.
The contrast could hardly be sharper.
In much of the developed world, vaccine orders are soaring into the billions of doses, Covid-19 cases are easing, economies are poised to roar to life and people are busy lining up summer vacations. In many less developed nations, though, the virus is raging on, sometimes out of control, while vaccinations are happening far too slowly to protect even the most vulnerable.
That split screen — clubs and restaurants reopening in the United States and Europe while people gasp for oxygen in India — was never supposed to be so stark. Some 192 countries signed up last year for Covax, a vaccine-sharing partnership, and the Gates Foundation poured $300 million into an Indian factory to make doses for the world's poor. The European Union's top executive told a global summit last June: "Vaccination is a universal human right."
But the virus is spreading more rapidly than ever, driven largely by gains in South America and India, and the campaign to vaccinate the world is floundering.
India, an important source of vaccines in normal times, has halted exports as it fights a record surge in the virus and an expanding humanitarian crisis. That has delayed critical shipments, with India making the majority of Covax supplies... nyt
In much of the developed world, vaccine orders are soaring into the billions of doses, Covid-19 cases are easing, economies are poised to roar to life and people are busy lining up summer vacations. In many less developed nations, though, the virus is raging on, sometimes out of control, while vaccinations are happening far too slowly to protect even the most vulnerable.
That split screen — clubs and restaurants reopening in the United States and Europe while people gasp for oxygen in India — was never supposed to be so stark. Some 192 countries signed up last year for Covax, a vaccine-sharing partnership, and the Gates Foundation poured $300 million into an Indian factory to make doses for the world's poor. The European Union's top executive told a global summit last June: "Vaccination is a universal human right."
But the virus is spreading more rapidly than ever, driven largely by gains in South America and India, and the campaign to vaccinate the world is floundering.
India, an important source of vaccines in normal times, has halted exports as it fights a record surge in the virus and an expanding humanitarian crisis. That has delayed critical shipments, with India making the majority of Covax supplies... nyt
Friday, April 30, 2021
Vaccine hesitancy
What can the history of vaccine hesitancy teach us about this pandemic? "Anti-vaccination movements have, at least in the long run, never succeeded in stopping rollouts," writes @DavidMotadel. https://t.co/Eo7e0v1epM
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) April 30, 2021
Sunday, April 25, 2021
Peter Singer interview
The New Yorker has just published a long interview with on a wide range of issues - it's a condensation of 3 interviews over about 5 hours, and has come out well: https://t.co/0owqCXQg7y
(https://twitter.com/PeterSinger/status/1386302543995695109?s=02)
(https://twitter.com/PeterSinger/status/1386302543995695109?s=02)
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