September 13, 2019
Reviews
August 27, 2019
A Thought-Provoking Volume Traces the Medical, Social, and Political Histories of In Vitro Fertilization
August 13, 2019
From Reproduction to the Right to Die: Bioethics Now
July 17, 2019
A Bioethicist’s Harrowing Encounter with Prescription Painkillers Highlights Systematic Health Care Problems
July 12, 2019
One Family’s Ordeal with Schizophrenia
July 11, 2019
Midsommar’s Ableism Resurrects the Dark History of Eugenics-Inspired Horror
June 19, 2019
The End of the Age of Paternity Secrets
May 21, 2019
The Disturbing Resilience of Scientific Racism
May 3, 2019
‘Hacking Darwin’ Explores Genetic Engineering–And What It Means to Be Human
(NPR) – We all know that the world is changing. Fast. But do we know where it is going? Not exactly. That being the case, how can we control where it is going? And who is the “we” in control? … Read More
April 26, 2019
How to Prepare for a Future of Gene-Edited Babies–Because It’s Coming
(Smithsonian) – It really feels to me like the world of science fiction and science fact are, in many ways, converging,” says Jamie Metzl. The polymath would know—he’s an expert on Asian foreign relations who served in the State Department, … Read More
March 18, 2019
3 Ways AI Is Already Changing Medicine
(Vox) – All in all, Topol discovered that most of the companies currently marketing personalized diets can’t actually deliver. It’s just one of the great insights in his new book about artificial intelligence, Deep Medicine. AI for diet is one … Read More
March 11, 2019
Does the Rhetoric of Consumer Genetics Aim to Eliminate Disability Without Mentioning It?
(Science) – In 2011, poet and writer George Estreich wrote about the impact of biotechnology on family life in his first book, The Shape of the Eye. The memoir centers on how his family’s life was changed, and enriched, by … Read More
March 8, 2019
Review: In ‘The Inventor,’ You Can’t Know Elizabeth Holmes’s Secrets. And Yet You Can’t Turn Away
(STAT News) – In “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” we are treated to great expanses of curtain without learning much of the woman behind it. The film, airing on HBO later this month, comes from Alex Gibney, … Read More
February 19, 2019
Academy-Award Nominated Film ‘End Game’ Examines End-of-Life Care
(PBS News Hour) – The Academy Award-nominated documentary “End Game” looks at different approaches in palliative care for people with terminal illness. The film follows medical practitioners, patients, and their families, as they tackle the difficult questions that arise during … Read More
January 29, 2019
A Medical Hell Recounted by Its Victims
(Nature) – In the 1840s, the Alabama physician James Marion Sims conducted infamous experimental gynaecological surgery exclusively on black women, bound to the surgical table by chattel slavery, physical force and opium. The drug did not allay their pain, and … Read More
January 18, 2019
A Surgeon Reflects on Death, Life and the ‘Incredible Gift’ of Organ Transplant
(NPR) – Each organ responds to transplant in a different way. “The liver will start pouring bile. The lungs start essentially breathing,” Mezrich says. “Maybe the most dramatic organ, of course, is the heart, because you put it in and … Read More
December 4, 2018
The Changing Norms Around Donor-Sibling Networks
(The Atlantic) – Of course, as sperm donation has grown more popular, the practices surrounding it have changed, too, trending ever more toward transparency: Today, parents of donor-conceived kids are far more likely to openly share their children’s origins with … Read More
November 28, 2018
The Truth About Killer Robots: The Year’s Most Terrifying Documentary
(The Guardian) – The film distinguishes itself from other science documentaries thanks to its holistic approach: rather than speaking exclusively to the people behind the tech – CEOs, programmers, engineers – Pozdorovkin also interviewed members of the global labor pool … Read More
November 5, 2018
Addiction Often Begins with a ‘Beautiful’ Boy or Girl
(STAT News) – In the American mind, drug addiction happens only to people “born under a bad sign.” That’s just not true. Worse, it implies that success in life protects individuals from addiction. Throughout my 50-year career working on drug … Read More
October 25, 2018
‘Gosnell’ Filmmakers: Theaters Dropping Movie, Preventing People from Buying Tickets
(Christian Post) – The filmmakers behind “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer” have questioned why hundreds of theaters have dropped the pro-life movie despite a strong opening performance. They also shared of various reports of moviegoers being misled … Read More
October 18, 2018
The Movie ‘Gosnell’ Has a Double Truth: We Ignore Poor Women and Abortion
(The Washington Post) – A new film out this past weekend highlights the horrifying 2009 death of Karnamaya Mongar, a 41-year-old refugee from Nepal who died shortly after leaving a Philadelphia abortion clinic called the Women’s Medical Society.
September 28, 2018
When Conventional Wisdom Is Put on Trial
(Undark) – Leigh, a former economist at Australian National University, fills his account with tantalizing examples that reinforce the Scared Straight lesson: When we go with our gut, we’re often wrong. Making teenage girls care for a demanding baby doll … Read More
September 17, 2018
Will Smart Robots Fight Our Wars and Take Our Jobs? Maybe.
(National Geographic) – Yuval Noah Harari’s last book, Sapiens, was a global bestseller. In his new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, one of the world’s most exciting young thinkers turns from the past to the present—and the future. … Read More
June 5, 2018
Genetics in the Madhouse
(Science) – Decades before Gregor Mendel studied pea plants or Thomas Hunt Morgan cultivated fruitflies, an isolated but vital international community gathered enormous bodies of data on hereditary traits. As Theodore Porter describes in his fascinating and original Genetics in … Read More
June 4, 2018
In an Age of Gene Editing and Surrogacy, What Does Heredity Mean?
(The New York Times) – Parents will relate to this. We invest as much care in our young ones as we possibly can, but many of us also pass along to them the black box of our genomes. We usually … Read More
