Science
essay
Medicine
Physician, invade thyself
Eager for medical breakthroughs, some doctors take enormous risks experimenting on themselves. Should we celebrate them?
Tom Doyle
essay
Illness and disease
The war on cancer
Is it time to abandon the century-old idea that cancer is best met with a ‘fight’ from patients and their doctors alike?
Elaine Schattner
video
Medicine
What is it like to be a paramedic, navigating human emergency?
17 minutes
essay
Illness and disease
Are they the canaries?
People with multiple chemical sensitivity seem to be allergic to the world. What, if anything, can medicine do for them?
Xi Chen
essay
Medicine
The body is not a machine
Modern biomedicine sees the body as a closed mechanistic system. But illness shows us to be permeable, ecological beings
Nitin K Ahuja
essay
History of science
Shocked
With evidence for efficacy so thin, and the stakes so high, why is ‘electroshock’ therapy still a mainstay of psychiatry?
John Read
essay
Illness and disease
Natural and unnatural
‘Natural’ remedies are metaphysically inconsistent and unscientific. Yet they offer something that modern medicine cannot
Alan Jay Levinovitz
essay
Illness and disease
Beautiful monsters
Cancer is part of multicellular life. Now the riotous growth of crested cacti show how humans might adapt to live with it
Athena Aktipis
essay
Medicine
Life and breath
There’s a strange, and deeply human, story behind how we taught machines to breathe for critically ill patients
Sarah Ruth Bates
essay
Illness and disease
Stealth infections
From the Black Death to polio, the most dangerous pathogens have moved silently, transmitted by apparently healthy people
Wendy Orent
essay
Medicine
The medicalised life
Why do so many see vaccines and other medical interventions as tools of social control rather than boons to health?
Bernice L Hausman
idea
Medicine
Gentle medicine could radically transform medical practice
Jacob Stegenga
video
Biotechnology
How harnessing the power of dogs could help scientists sniff out cancer early
7 minutes
essay
Public health
It didn’t have to be this way
A bioethicist at the heart of the Italian coronavirus crisis asks: why won’t we talk about the tradeoffs of the lockdown?
Silvia Camporesi
essay
Future of technology
Engines of life
At the level of the tiny, biology is all about engineering. That’s why nanotechnology can rebuild medicine from within
Sonia Contera
idea
Illness and disease
Chemobrain is real. Here’s what to expect after cancer treatment
Anton Isaacs
essay
Medicine
No patient is an island
How a concern to protect the autonomy of patients leads to the exclusion of families just when they are needed the most
Anita Ho
essay
Animals and humans
Rats are us
They are sentient beings with rich emotional lives, yet we subject them to experimental cruelty without conscience. Why?
Kristin Andrews & Susana Monsó
essay
Bioethics
Neither person nor cadaver
The body is warm, but the brain has gone dark: why the notion of brain death provokes the thorniest of medical dilemmas
Sharon Kaufman
video
Biology
Singing Mozart in the MRI shows how overtone singers can hit two notes at once
1 minute
essay
Wellbeing
A sage on the ward
Good nurses are attuned to the lived experience of patients. Can the theory of phenomenology add more to their practice?
Dan Zahavi
essay
Consciousness and altered states
The whole-planet view
Psychedelics offer a sense of expansive connectedness, just like astronauts have felt looking back to Earth from space
Rosalind Watts, Sam Gandy & Alex Evans
video
Illness and disease
How a ball kick to the head triggered a black comedy of sickness and mania
7 minutes
idea
Chemistry
Why synthetic chemicals seem more toxic than natural ones
Niranjana Krishnan