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Science

Essays and videos exploring physics, evolution, cosmology and other frontiers in science
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Neuroscience

Rethinking the homunculus

When we discovered that the brain contained a map of the body it revolutionised neuroscience. But it’s time for an update

Moheb Costandi

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video

Medicine

Why surgery and barbering were one occupation in the Middle Ages

6 minutes

A black and white photo of a man in doctor’s clothing posed next to a lab bench with a microscope looking directly at the camera
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Medicine

Physician, invade thyself

Eager for medical breakthroughs, some doctors take enormous risks experimenting on themselves. Should we celebrate them?

Tom Doyle

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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

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Medicine

What is it like to be a paramedic, navigating human emergency?

17 minutes

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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

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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

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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

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Illness and disease

Natural and unnatural

‘Natural’ remedies are metaphysically inconsistent and unscientific. Yet they offer something that modern medicine cannot

Alan Jay Levinovitz

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Medicine

Gentle medicine could radically transform medical practice

Jacob Stegenga

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Biotechnology

How harnessing the power of dogs could help scientists sniff out cancer early

7 minutes

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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

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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

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Illness and disease

Chemobrain is real. Here’s what to expect after cancer treatment

Anton Isaacs

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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

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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

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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

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Biology

Singing Mozart in the MRI shows how overtone singers can hit two notes at once

1 minute

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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

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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