What Makes Vaccines Social?
[no-caption] Luis Alvarez/Getty Images Now is a pressing time for vaccinating the U.S. population (and the world) against COVID-19. But there are social hurdles that need to be…
Tag: medicine
Phenomena of the Irrational. On wonder doctors, witches and conspiracy theories
From 1945 until the late 1950s, a wave of accusations of witchcraft swept through Germany, and tens of thousands of people flocked to wonder healers. But why? And…
The CDC Needs Social Science
[no-caption] John Moore/Getty Images The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the primary agency in the United States that monitors, predicts, and responds to chronic disea…
A Startling Link Between Neanderthals and COVID-19
[no-caption] Angus Krieg SAPIENS host Chip Colwell speaks with evolutionary geneticist Hugo Zeberg about his surprising discovery of a connection between Neanderthal DNA and a greater ris…
When You Can’t Look Away: Seeing and Difference in American Medicine
Juliet When I interviewed her, Juliet was a third-year medical student and a dedicated member of her medical school’s interest groups on social justice. I interviewed her because…
What’s Behind Humanity’s Love-Hate Relationship With Exercise?
Many people have a strong desire for physical rest despite the fact that health experts advise them to exercise more. Heart rules/Pexels At the start of the COVID-19…
Two Surgeries, 800 Years Apart
As an archaeologist, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what life was like in the past. I’ve also been injured a time or two, and I’ve wondered…
COVID-19 as analogy for antimicrobial resistance by Danny de Vries
Introduction Being in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic sets the right stage for us to ponder the problem of antimicrobial resistance, or AMR. What is exactly the…
What Pandemics Leave Behind
[no-caption] Angus Greig At some time in the future, the novel coronavirus pandemic will fade. What will this globally traumatic contagion leave in its wake? In this episode…
No, “Racial Genetics” Aren’t Affecting COVID-19 Deaths
In the U.K., people of black, Asian, and minority ethnic backgrounds have been disproportionately hard hit by COVID-19. Tim Dennell/Flickr Around the world, there are reports that COVID-1…
U.S. Coronavirus Advice Is Failing Pregnant Women
Zully, a COVID-19 patient whose last name was withheld for privacy, holds up a photo of her newborn baby, Neysel, on April 24 in Stamford, Connecticut. She gave…
Roundtable: “COVID-19: Views from the Field”
We’re wrapping up our five-part series, “COVID-19: Views from the Field,” with a pre-recorded roundtable. This roundtable brought our authors into conversation with each other, acros…
Ventilators Alone Won’t Save Us
[no-caption] Juanmonino/Getty Images During an unusually calm shift in the intensive care unit, Barbara (a pseudonym), the experienced doctor on staff, asked me and the resident physician…
Platypus Celebrates AAPI Heritage Month
In celebration and recognition of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, take a look back at some of our favorite past posts from and about the region.…
Cambodia in the time of COVID-19: Conceptions, perceptions, and approaches to the novel coronavirus
*អត្ថបទនេះមានជាភាសាខ្មែរ។* Editor’s note: This post is the first in our five-part series “COVID-19: Views from the Field.” Click here to read an introduction written by series organi…
How the Opioid Crackdown Is Hurting Chronic Pain Patients
In the wake of a 2016 federal guideline, many chronic pain patients have had difficulty accessing their previous dose of opioids such as oxycodone (above). John Moore/Getty Images…
A Year of Trans Childhood by Paula Martin
Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century Tey Meadow University of California Press, 2018. 320 pages. The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) …
The Colour of Coffee: Racism, Gender and Coffee Consumption in 19th Century Algeria
Today, coffee is consumed everywhere in the world. Despite its neo-colonial forms of production, it is a drink which brings people together, but the consumption of coffee in…
What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting Down Syndrome
Down syndrome is typically caused by an error in cell division during fetal development, which results in an embryo with three copies of chromosome 21 instead of two. Marcel Hirshegger/SAPIEN…
The Dawn of Digital Therapeutics
A techno-optimistic attitude tells us we’re living at an inflexion point where care practices are being transformed by technology. Monitoring and attending to health and well-being are no…
Searching, Studying and Doing Sociology in the Medico-Legal Borderlands by Laura Bisaillon
Medico-legal borderlands? What is this nebulous sounding compound concept, “medico-legal borderlands”? How has it been used by social scientists whose ethnographic studies scratch at itches in the…
How Traditional Knowledge Opens Nature’s Medicine Cabinet
A natural pharmacist at a complementary medicine clinic in Trujillo, Peru, displays a plant tincture. Jane Palmer Under the clear, moonlit sky of Friday, July 13, 2018, Elide…
The Irresponsible Neanderthal
An article grabbed my attention last year but it took a while for me to realize why. The title, “Neanderthals Self-Medicated for Pain” examined research findings analyzing Neanderthal…