Search Results for: Medicine

How Doctors Could Rescue Health Care

Longreads Pick

If neither party is proposing effective solutions to the cost crisis, and political deadlock in Washington is preventing the consideration of new ideas, are we doomed to witness a slowly collapsing health care system that eventually will provide adequate care only to those who can afford to pay? In his latest book on health care,7 the Princeton sociologist Paul Starr, who worked on the ill-fated Clinton Health Security Plan, despairs of any political action that could bring about major reform. However, a new movement in the medical profession might help to start such reform by reconfiguring the way medicine will be practiced.

Published: Oct 27, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,857 words)

Flu Warning: Beware the Drug Companies!

Longreads Pick

The predicted dire emergency [with H1N1] did not occur. In the 2009–2010 “influenza season” about 18,000 people died from the disease worldwide, fewer than in previous years, and the vast majority of victims had serious underlying conditions such as cancer, lung disease, AIDS, or severe obesity, which can impair breathing.7 Since one influenza strain usually dominates all others during a typical flu season, H1N1 may actually have saved lives by displacing more aggressive viruses. The WHO maintains that its decisions were based on the best available evidence, but last year European governments, stuck with hundreds of millions of euros’ worth of unused medicines and vaccines, began asking questions.

Published: Apr 22, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,588 words)

Breaking Bad News

Longreads Pick

For decades, the way bad news was broken was, as one official British report put it, “deeply insensitive.” Now we do it better, thanks to the efforts of one American widow. “Common sense tells us that those facts are an emotional bomb waiting to go off. And medical thinking now recognizes this: receiving bad news, according to the Western Journal of Medicine, ‘results in cognitive, behavioral, or emotional deficit in the person receiving the news that persists for some time after the news is received.'”

Published: Apr 18, 2011
Length: 19 minutes (4,944 words)

Suzanne Collins’s War Stories for Kids

Longreads Pick

In “The Hunger Games” Collins embraces her father’s impulse to educate young people about the realities of war. “If we wait too long, what kind of expectation can we have?” she said. “We think we’re sheltering them, but what we’re doing is putting them at a disadvantage.” But her medicine goes down easily, thanks to cliffhangers, star-crossed lovers and the kinds of details that create a fully formed universe. Collins labored for days over the construction of the arenas in “The Hunger Games,” analyzing “Rambo” clips to help her visualize the use of weaponry like crossbows.

Published: Apr 10, 2011
Length: 11 minutes (2,918 words)

Forty Years Later: How 'Oregon Trail' Was Born

Forty Years Later: How ‘Oregon Trail’ Was Born

Forty Years Later: How ‘Oregon Trail’ Was Born

Longreads Pick

With no monitor, the original version of Oregon Trail was played by answering prompts that printed out on a roll of paper. At 10 characters per second, the teletype spat out, “How much do you want to spend on your oxen team?” or, “Do you want to eat (1) poorly (2) moderately or (3) well?” Students typed in the numerical responses, then the program chugged through a few basic formulas and spat out the next prompt along with a status update. “Bad illness—medicine used,” it might say. “Do you want to (1) hunt or (2) continue?”

Source: City Pages
Published: Jan 20, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,278 words)

What We Can Learn from a Nuclear Reactor

What We Can Learn from a Nuclear Reactor

What We Can Learn from a Nuclear Reactor

Longreads Pick

The connection between banks and nuclear reactors is not obvious to most bankers, nor banking regulators. But to the men and women who study industrial accidents such as Three Mile Island, Deepwater Horizon, Bhopal or the Challenger shuttle—engineers, psychologists and even sociologists—the connection is obvious. James Reason, a psychologist who studies human error in aviation, medicine, shipping and industry, uses the downfall of Barings Bank as a favourite case study. “I used to speak to bankers about risk and accidents and they thought I was talking about people banging their shins,” he told me. “Then they discovered what a risk is. It came with the name of Nick Leeson.”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Jan 14, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,095 words)

In Haiti, a Relationship Built on Adversity

In Haiti, a Relationship Built on Adversity

The Decline Effect

The Decline Effect