Science in the Public Mind: < em > sources and consequences of antipathy < /em >
Perspect Biol Med. 2023;66(3):468-477. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2023.a902039.ABSTRACTPublic attitudes toward science in the United States can profoundly affect national well-being, and even national security. We live in a time when these attitudes are considerably more negative than usual. This critical assessment identifies a number of contributors to public antipathy toward science, some of which are intrinsic to the nature of science and as old as science itself, and some of which are external to science, have arisen recently, and may be unique to the present. Historic examples of scientific developments and challenges and two ...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: William H Woodruff Source Type: research
Conceptualizing Endometriosis Pain Through Metaphors
Perspect Biol Med. 2023;66(3):478-491. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2023.a902040.ABSTRACTBiomedical and philosophical traditions postulate the experience of pain either as quantifiable or as sociocultural phenomena. This critical assessment offers a close reading of Lara Parker's Vagina Problems: Endometriosis, Painful Sex, and Other Taboo Topics (2020) and Abby Norman's Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women's Pain (2018), analyzing the authors' use of language as a tool to comprehend and communicate pain. Norman's and Parker's memoirs narrate the lived experience of endometriosis, a condition diagnosed almo...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Julia M Abraham None Rajasekaran Source Type: research
What Is Light in Dark Times?
Perspect Biol Med. 2023;66(3):492-501. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2023.a902041.ABSTRACTAlisse Waterston and Charlotte Corden's Light in Dark Times (2020) began as an address by the president of the American Anthropological Association and was transformed into "a work of art and anthropology" by a member of the audience. The result was a coauthored book-length graphic essay that is expansive in subject matter, and in the representation of ideas, scholars, and questions about what it means to be human and how we will pass the time that is given us on earth. Light and dark are central to the visual representations that serve as the bac...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Sue E Estroff Source Type: research
Erratum
Perspect Biol Med. 2023;66(1):vii. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2023.0012.NO ABSTRACTPMID:38662003 | DOI:10.1353/pbm.2023.0012 (Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine)
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Introduction to the Special Section
Perspect Biol Med. 2023;66(1):1-2. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2023.0000.NO ABSTRACTPMID:38662004 | DOI:10.1353/pbm.2023.0000 (Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine)
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Franklin G Miller Source Type: research
Placebos and Metaphors
The objective of this essay is to develop the argument that placebos are a species of metaphor and to demonstrate that an analysis of the figurative trope can help us elucidate the power of the placebo response. The cognitive and embodied responses to both metaphors and placebos stem from the transfer of meaning between two domains, each with rich allusive properties that in turn depend on highly ramified and interconnected neural webs. Metaphors and placebos require an appropriate cultural backdrop for their linguistic and cognitive work and are dependent on shared social forms of life. More specifically, metaphors rely o...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Abraham Fuks Source Type: research
Publishing Biomedical Research: < em > a rapidly evolving ecosystem < /em >
This article takes a broad view of the biomedical research publishing system from its origins in the 17th century to the present day. It begins with a story from the author's lab that illustrates a scientist's complex interactions with the publishing system and then reviews the history, growth, and evolution of scientific publishing, including several recent disruptive developments: the digital transformation, the open access (OA) movement, the creation of "predatory journals," and the emergence of preprint archives. Each has influenced scientific peer review and editorial decision-making, two processes critical to the con...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Jeffrey S Flier Source Type: research
Mycobacterial Death and Resurrection: < em > paradigm shifts in disease understanding < /em >
This article examines two medical journal research articles on tuberculosis, one published in 1938 and the other in 2014. The two articles, which use animal models to understand aspects of tuberculosis mycobacteria survival in the lungs, rely on markedly different research and biotechnological techniques, reach somewhat opposite conclusions, and reflect different paradigms of tuberculosis pathogenesis: the 1938 article (indirectly invoking Koch's postulates) was written before the paradigm of so-called "latent" and "reactivation" tuberculosis became widely adopted, while the 2014 article (indirectly invoking the molecular ...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Chadi Cortas Source Type: research
Imagine This: Happy Aging in America
Perspect Biol Med. 2023;66(4):610-619. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2023.a909730.ABSTRACTThis essay explores what it means to age happily, beginning with concepts of aging and happiness and proceeding to factors that promote or undermine happy aging. Relationships, contribution, and personal growth all add value to an aging life. Community also matters, as does the acceptance that a happy older age requires neither perfect health nor immense wealth.PMID:38661848 | DOI:10.1353/pbm.2023.a909730 (Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine)
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Tia Powell Source Type: research
Negative Impacts of < em > Taegyo < /em > : Feminist and Disability Perspectives
This study examines the origin and religious roots of taegyo, Korean traditional prenatal education, and raises concerns about potential negative impacts of contemporary taegyo practice from feminist and disability perspectives. Taegyo has been accepted without much criticism due to its deep integration into prenatal care culture, and most existing literature focuses on taegyo's positive impacts on fetal health and development from scientific or nursing perspectives. This article analyzes a 19th-century taegyo manual, Taegyo Singi, and Seon and Won Buddhist literatures on taegyo in order to understand the religio-cultural ...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Hajung Lee Source Type: research
Futures of Care: Care Technologies and Graphic Medicine
Perspect Biol Med. 2023;66(4):639-650. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2023.a909732.ABSTRACTAssistive care technologies, developed to replace, support, or extend human capabilities and to address the surging demands of care, have been gaining prominence recently. The current trend summons a posthuman approach through decentering the privileged role of humans in several spaces of caregiving, such as hospitals and eldercare homes. The existence of these cutting-edge assistive technologies, exciting as they are, hints at a possible future when the distinction between humans and technology will be blurred, thus transforming care relations. H...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Sathyaraj Venkatesan Livine Ancy A Source Type: research
Futures of Care: Care Technologies and Graphic Medicine
Perspect Biol Med. 2023;66(4):639-650. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2023.a909731.ABSTRACTAssistive care technologies, developed to replace, support, or extend human capabilities and to address the surging demands of care, have been gaining prominence recently. The current trend summons a posthuman approach through decentering the privileged role of humans in several spaces of caregiving, such as hospitals and eldercare homes. The existence of these cutting-edge assistive technologies, exciting as they are, hints at a possible future when the distinction between humans and technology will be blurred, thus transforming care relations. H...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Sathyaraj Venkatesan Livine Ancy A Source Type: research
Bios-Ethics and the Bios Emergency: Finding the Real Work
This article presents a case for transforming traditional bioethics into "Bios-ethics." This exposition relies on three propositions: (1) the climate emergency is the "Bios emergency"; (2) in the Bios emergency, bioethics must be replaced by Bios-ethics; and (3) the top and overwhelming priority of Bios-ethics is to address the Bios emergency. Biocentrism, habitat, and environmental ethics are discussed in light of their contribution to the development of Bios-ethics, and potential lines of research in Bios-ethics are outlined. The urgency of undertaking substantive conceptual and practical innovations in response to our c...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: David Schenck Source Type: research
Euthanasia and End-of-Life Decisions: From the Empirical Turn to Moral Intuitionism
This article employs a "revisionary" intuititionist perspective to discuss the results of a clinical ethics study about intensivists' perceptions of withhold or withdraw decisions. The results show that practitioners' moral experience is at odds with both the discontinuity and equivalence theses. This outcome allows us to revisit certain concepts, such as intention and causal relationship, that are prominent in the conceptual debate. Intensivists also regard end-of-life decisions as being on a scale from least to most active, and whether they regard active forms of end-of-life decisions as ethically acceptable depends on t...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Marta Spranzi Source Type: research
Organismal Superposition Problem and Nihilist Challenge in the Definition of Death
Perspect Biol Med. 2024;67(1):1-21. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2024.a919707.ABSTRACTAccording to the mainstream bioethical stance, death constitutes the termination of an organism. This essay argues that such an understanding of death is inappropriate in the usual context of determining death, since it also has a social bearing. There are two reasons to justify this argument. First, the mainstream bioethical definition generates an organismal superposition challenge, according to which a given patient in a single physiological state might be both alive and dead, like Schrödinger's cat. Therefore, there is no clear answer as to whet...
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - April 25, 2024 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Piotr Grzegorz Nowak Source Type: research
