Category: Health & Medicine
“legalizing marijuana won’t solve those disparities”
I found this interview with Alex Berenson, who just wrote a new book about the dangers of marijuana, very interesting and well-balanced: TMP: In your Times op-ed, you suggest that the ominous scholarly findings have been ignored thanks to legalization advocates...
what role do traditional healers have in a modern healthcare system?
On the fence just down the street from the hospital where I work in Kenya, there is a sign for a “Dr. Musa” promising treatments for everything from “business” to “male strength”. Sometimes as I walk through town, I will...
more on teaching professionalism to medical students
After reading Brewer Eberly’s great piece on the main site about virtue ethics and the Reformed tradition, I was delighted to find this reflection from him about teaching professionalism to medical students: And yet, medical students may be disconnected from moral...
preventing suicide with text messages
This article on the work of Dr. Jerome Motto and the therapists carrying on his work today is fascinating: The most pivotal response was sent to Douglas Kreider, one of Motto’s researchers, by a study participant who lived in an...
“The FDA’s Mango-Flavored Trolley Problem”
Don’t you just love that headline? These competing concerns leave the FDA trying to thread a particularly tricky needle: How do they get these products into the hands of the people who need them, while keeping them away from people...
even surgeons agree: we hate EMRs!
Atul Gawande jumps on the anti-EMR bandwagon, and it’s a very satisfying read: There’s a techno-optimist view of how this story will unfold. Big technology companies are already circling to invest in IKS Health. They see an opportunity for artificial...
better birth outcomes for black babies and their mothers
There is more and more data coming out about the risk of death for black mothers and their babies in America, so I was really encouraged to read this article about using the Centering Pregnancy model of care for black...
how bodies matter in miscarriage
Tish Harrison Warren has a moving and beautiful essay at Christianity Today about her quest to honor the body of her unborn child: Our doctor wasn’t a jerk or insensitive to our grief. He was professional; we liked him. But he worked...
CCHF Match
I know that I have readers who are medical professionals or healthcare administrators interested in integrating their faith and work as they serve the poor… so I’m delighted to share about CCHF Match, a service that tries to do just...
life: quantity vs. quality
This entire essay from Raymond Barfield, reviewing Barbara Ehrenreich’s Natural Causes is gold: One conclusion to draw from her book is that we do not just need better doctors: we need better patients. And we only become better patients by...