Category Archives: Medicine

Genetics, Journalism, Medicine

Right to know v. right not to know

IN THIS information-saturated age, what happens when the right to know comes up against the right not to know? The ease of genetic testing has brought this question to the fore. Genes, some of which contain disease-causing mutations, are shared within families, meaning the results of a test for a genetic condition inevitably affect more people than the one who consented to be tested. Two contrasting legal cases pitting these rights against each other – one in Britain, the other in Germany – stand to extend the idea of who, exactly, is a patient and to alter the way in which medicine is practised…

This article first appeared in The Economist on 28 September 2019. To continue reading, click here (paywall).

 

Forensic, Journalism, Medicine

Fit to stand trial?

LLOYD Barrus stands accused in Montana of five federal crimes, including accountability to deliberate homicide relating to the death of a police officer. The charges have to do with an incident in 2017 that appears to have started in a dispute about a traffic violation. By the end of it, both Barrus’s son and Broadwater County sheriff’s deputy Mason Moore were dead…

This article first appeared in New Scientist on 25 September 2019. To continue reading, click here (paywall).

Journalism, Medicine, Psychology

Ebola psy-ops

THE Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is providing a natural experiment in fighting fake news. Occurring in a conflict zone, amid a controversial presidential election, the epidemic has proved to be fertile ground for conspiracy theories and political manipulation, which can hamper efforts to treat patients and fight the virus’s spread. Public health workers have mounted an unprecedented effort to counter misinformation, saying the success or failure of the Ebola response may pivot on who controls the narrative…

This story first appeared in Science on 15 January 2019. To continue reading, click here (paywall).

Books, History, Journalism, Medicine, Pale Rider

Why don’t we remember these 100 million dead?

IN France, where I live, there are more than 170,000 monuments to the First World War. To my knowledge, there is only one to the 1918 influenza pandemic. A simple stone cross, it stands at Lajoux in the Jura Mountains, close to the border with Switzerland…

This article first appeared on UnHerd.com on 6 November 2018. To continue reading, click here:

https://unherd.com/2018/11/dont-remember-100-million-dead/

History, History of science or medicine, Journalism, Medicine

Centenary of a catastrophe

ON June 29th 1918 Martín Salazar, Spain’s inspector general of health, stood up in front of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Madrid and declared, not without embarrassment, that the disease which was ravaging the country was to be found nowhere else in Europe…

This article first appeared in The Economist on 27 September 2018. To continue reading, click here.