Why is pain in children ignored?
It is hard to believe that in the mid 1980s it was standard care, even in many academic health centres, for infants to have open heart surgery with no anaesthesia but just a drug to keep the infant still.
Celebrating the life of Nelson Mandela, continuing the quest for social justice
By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel
Once or twice in a generation a global champion for social justice emerges. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mahatma Gandhi. Nelson Mandela.
Nelson Mandela, champion of public health
By Yogan Pillay
Our late former President Mandela has passed on but his legacy will live on and should live on for generations to come. He inspired millions across the world to do good, to forgive, to work for the common good. This also inspired me – from my youth in university when he was in prison and as a government official since he became the President of our country and today as we mourn his passing.
Mental health and human rights
By Michael Dudley and Fran Gale
On 29 November, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Soviet dissident poet and translator, died in Paris. In August 1968, this mother of two was arrested, “diagnosed” with schizophrenia and underwent five years’ forcible psychiatric treatment at Moscow’s then- infamous Serbsky Institute. She famously protested in Moscow’s Red Square against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
The right to health: realizing a 65-year-old global commitment
By José M. Zuniga
A strong case can be made, based upon modern human rights concepts and international law, that the right to health, as well as health-related services, is a human right. However, this right has been far from fully realized in any country of the world, including those most affluent (e.g. the United States), even 65 years after the right to health was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), whose adoption we annually commemorate on Human Rights Day.
The neural mechanisms underlying aesthetic appreciation
By Zaira Cattaneo and Marcos Nadal
Humans are apparently the only species to aesthetically enjoy the world around them. What is it that allows us to admire the elegance of a ballet dancer, or to enjoy the beauty of the sun’s reflection on the sea as it sets under the horizon?
Radiology training and education
By Alex Mamouria
The entire structure of the Radiology professional board exam, the last but crucial hurtle after eight years of post-graduate training, changed this year. The old exam, that in place for decades, had two discrete elements. First, a written exam that included imaging physics followed by an oral exam that reviewed only diagnostic imaging that was taken at the end of training.
HIV/AIDS: How to stop the unstoppable?
By Dorothy H. Crawford
It is over 100 years since HIV, the AIDS virus, began spreading in humans. It all started in West Central Africa where, scientists calculate, HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans around 1900. Then in 1964 the virus made its first trans-continental flight. In one move it leaped from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Here it established a foot-hold in Haiti before travelling on to the US in 1969. So began a journey that took HIV to virtually every country in the world, eventually infecting 65 million people, a figure that is rising by around three million annually.
In memoriam: M. Therese Southgate
Marie Therese Southgate, MD, a senior editor at JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association for nearly five decades, died at her home in Chicago on November 22 after a short illness. She was 85.
Brave new world?
By Richard J. Miller
Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of the author Aldous Huxley. Huxley was celebrated for many things and his involvement with the culture of psychotropic drugs was certainly one his most famous, or perhaps infamous, associations.
Helping smokers quit during Lung Cancer Awareness Month
Smoking causes the majority of lung cancers – both in smokers and in people exposed to secondhand smoke. To mark Lung Cancer Awareness Month, Nicotine & Tobacco Research Editor David J. K. Balfour, D.Sc., has selected a few related articles, which can be read in full and for free on the journal’s website. He also invited Elyse R. Park, PhD, MPH, to share what really helps smokers quit.
Worn out wonder drugs
By Dr Donna Lecky
It is undeniable that the discovery of antibiotics changed modern medicine. However, from their mass production in 1943, antibiotics have gone from being dubbed the wonder drug to being an issue of serious global concern.
Depression in older adults: a q&a with Dr. Brad Karlin
On Veterans Day, the Journal of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological and Social Sciences published “Comparison of the Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression among Older Versus Younger Veterans: Results of a National Evaluation” co-author Bradley E. Karlin joins us to discuss the evaluation’s promising results. Why do older adults utilize mental health services at […]
Alcohol marketing, football, and self-regulation
By Jean Adams
When we set out to quantify the volume of alcohol marketing in televised English football, I knew there would be some, but I was caught off guard by quite how much there was.
The ups and downs of weight loss
By Bill Bogart
On 15 October 2013, the New York Times carried an article on President Taft’s struggle with his corpulence many decades ago. This “massively obese” man pursued weight loss into his old age. But long term shedding of pounds eluded him.
Hope and health
By Robert Perlman
Socioeconomic disparities in health are among the most troublesome and refractory problems in medicine. Health disparities begin before birth and are lifelong. Babies born to poor, disadvantaged, or marginalized parents have an increased incidence of prematurity and low birth weight, a greater burden of disease and disability throughout life, and a shorter life expectancy than people of higher socioeconomic status.