Articles

Evolution and medicine: the long reach of "Dr. Darwin"

In this review we consider the new science of Darwinian medicine. While it has often been said that evolutionary theory is the glue that holds the disparate branches of biological inquiry together and gives th...

Authors: Niall Shanks and Rebecca A Pyles

Can the difference in medical fees for self and donor freeze-thaw embryo transfer cycle, be in fact a cover-up for the sale of donated human embryos?

Authors: Boon Chin Heng

Healthcare access as a right, not a privilege: a construct of Western thought

Over 45 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Those living in poverty exhibit the worst health status. Employment, education, income, and race are important factors in a person's ability to acquire ...

Authors: Thomas J Papadimos

Ethics and AIDS in Africa: The Challenge to our Thinking Edited by: Anton A van Niekerk, Loretta M Kopelman. South Africa: David Philips Publishers

Authors: Stephanie A Nixon and Nkosinathi Ngcobo

Medical science, culture, and truth

There is a fairly closed circle between culture, language, meaning, and truth such that the world of a given culture is a world understood in terms of the meanings produced in that culture. Medicine is, in fac...

Authors: Grant Gillett

Governing therapy choices: Power/Knowledge in the treatment of progressive renal failure

This article outlines the struggle between the power of the health care professional and the rights of the individual to choose freely a modality of treatment. Nurses are instrumental in assisting patients in ...

Authors: Dave Holmes, Amélie M Perron and Marc Savoie

Report on the conference on 'Men, Women, and Medicine: A New View of the Biology of Sex/Gender Differences and Aging' held in Berlin, 24–26th February 2006

The first world wide symposium on the topic of gender-specific medicine provided the latest research on differences in sex and/or gender in medicine and medical care. The presentations ranged beyond the topic ...

Authors: Antje Kampf

Resident-generated versus instructor-generated cases in ethics and professionalism training

The emphasis on ethics and professionalism in medical education continues to increase. Indeed, in the United States the ACGME will require residency programs to include professionalism training in all curricul...

Authors: Alexander A Kon

Genetic modification and genetic determinism

In this article we examine four objections to the genetic modification of human beings: the freedom argument, the giftedness argument, the authenticity argument, and the uniqueness argument. We then demonstrat...

Authors: David B Resnik and Daniel B Vorhaus

"The physician as poet" review of: Pereira, Peter Saying the World

Peter Pereira is a family physician and a poet. I weave excerpts from Dr. Pereira's poems into a brief history of medicine's mythological and historical roots, beginning with the Egyptian god Thoth, and the Gr...

Authors: Joel Weishaus

The rhetorician's craft, distinctions in science, and political morality

In his response to Szasz' Secular Humanism and Scientific Psychiatry, the author considers the use of rhetorical devices in Szasz' work, Szasz' avoidance of acknowledging psychiatry's scientific distinctions, ...

Authors: John Z Sadler

What's the problem? A response to "secular humanism and scientific psychiatry"

Notwithstanding the interest and importance of Szasz's position, it neglects the phenomena, the real problems which take people to the clinic seeking treatment, and the conditionality of the notion of individu...

Authors: Derek Bolton

Secular humanism and "scientific psychiatry"

The Council for Secular Humanism identifies Secular Humanism as a "way of thinking and living" committed to rejecting authoritarian beliefs and embracing "individual freedom and responsibility ... and cooperat...

Authors: Thomas Szasz

Cultural context in medical ethics: lessons from Japan

This paper examines two topics in Japanese medical ethics: non-disclosure of medical information by Japanese physicians, and the history of human rights abuses by Japanese physicians during World War II. These...

Authors: Tia Powell

First-Person Neuroscience: A new methodological approach for linking mental and neuronal states

Though the brain and its neuronal states have been investigated extensively, the neural correlates of mental states remain to be determined. Since mental states are experienced in first-person perspective and ...

Authors: Georg Northoff and Alexander Heinzel

Tacit knowledge as the unifying factor in evidence based medicine and clinical judgement

The paper outlines the role that tacit knowledge plays in what might seem to be an area of knowledge that can be made fully explicit or codified and which forms a central element of Evidence Based Medicine. Ap...

Authors: Tim Thornton

Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine: Expanding the open-access conversation on health care

Natural philosophy once spanned the fields of philosophy, science, and medicine. Scientific disciplines and medical specialties have rapidly achieved independence, and the availability of the internet and open...

Authors: Dan J Stein, Derek Bolton, Damiaan Denys, Thomas Huddle and Tia Powell