“I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse,” are words that lend themselves to whispers in the night, a disclosure between friends over a glass of wine. But these are not words that are meant to be spoken by a professional woman working in academia, for they break a social contract – the life of… Read more →
Tag: COVID-19
Incarcerated and Infected: The Fragility of Our State Prison System During the COVID-19 Pandemic
In the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic crisis, policymakers were forced to answer hard-hitting ethical questions: how would resources including ventilation and vaccination doses be fairly allocated among citizens? Who would they prioritize, and how would they decide? Detailed as they were, allocation guidelines neglected to address and prioritize the needs of thousands who… Read more →
COVID-19 Vaccines and Children: What Is All the Fuss About?
On October 19, 2021, the FDA authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in children 5 to 11 years of age. With the COVID-19 vaccine now approved for use in younger children, many parents are asking the question: should my child get the vaccine? As we have already seen, many states are beginning to… Read more →
Bodies of Uncertainty
I hadn’t even entered my brief, early-pandemic bread baking phase when other people’s fears about “pandemic weight gain” became unavoidable. I have been fat for my entire life, and as a fat person who does not diet I have become very skilled at avoiding conversations about other people’s fear of weight gain that might cause… Read more →
The Sixteen Year Gap: Women in Medical Trials and the Side Effects Today
Historically, women have been excluded from clinical trials creating a gender gap in pharmacology. This means that medication is geared towards men, benefiting men’s health more than women’s. After the thalidomide crisis, US laws excluded many women from drug trials for medications that were ostensibly for all adults until 1993. Despite legal changes, the issue… Read more →
What’s Old is New Again: The David Saunders Autopsy and Corporate Graverobbing in America
On August 24, 2021, 98-year-old David Saunders died from COVID-19 at a hospital near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Nearly two months later, on October 17, he was publicly dissected in front of hundreds of spectators in a Marriott hotel ballroom in Portland, Oregon. When news of the event reached the Saunders family, they were shocked. His… Read more →
The Agency of the Irresponsible
Like many faculty at state universities, the beginning of this school year brings me more terror than excitement. Colorado Mesa University (CMU), the institution at which I have taught since 1999, will require neither masks nor vaccines for students, and faculty cannot enforce mask mandates in the classrooms. This flies in the face of… Read more →
Diseases of Body and Soul: A Review of Philippa Koch’s The Course of God’s Providence
Forgive me for stating the obvious, but it takes a long time to write a book. It takes so long, in fact, that when a new book just happens to coincide with an eerily relevant global crisis, it presents a largely unexpected opportunity for the author to make the case for her work’s importance. All… Read more →
The Problem with Medical History in the Age of COVID-19
The pandemic has prompted a proliferation of newspaper articles, think-pieces, and other public writing on the history of medicine. Some have been quite thoughtful, offering new perspectives on the past and present of science, technology, and healthcare, and making radical suggestions for the post-coronavirus future. Others, however, have indulged some of our worst instincts about… Read more →
“Blindness and Boldness”: Haptic Imaginaries from the Operating Theater to the Pandemic Everyday
“It’s like driving a car in the fog”: The Operating Theater A torso, swollen with gas and yellow with antiseptic – this was the only glimpse of the patient’s body visible among the draped blue sterile sheets of the operating theatre. Poking through four quarter-inch incisions across the lower abdomen were the tools of surgical… Read more →