Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Phil Ambery
It’s good to see the problem of anti-microbial resistance revisited by Professor Farrar — a timely reminder to us all of the potential dangers ahead. Memories are short, few will remember the days of the early 90s, when anti-HIV therapies were limited, as were the lives of patients with AIDS. Others will assume that the days of death by “consumption” have long since passed.
By Leonard A. Jason
Names of diseases have never required scientific accuracy (e.g. malaria means bad air, lyme is a town, and ebola is a river). But some disease names are offensive, victim-blaming, and stigmatizing. Multiple sclerosis was once called hysterical paralysis when people believed that this disease was caused by stress linked with oedipal fixations.
By Nick Dragojlovic
When scientists in Scotland announced the successful cloning of Dolly the Sheep in 1997, it triggered a frenzy of speculation in the global media about the possibility of human cloning, and elevated ethical questions to the fore of public discussions about biotechnology. This debate had far-reaching consequences, with citizens’ perceived moral objections to human cloning contributing to the imposition of restrictive policies on stem cell research that involves the cloning of embryos.
By Eldar Sarajlic
Public controversies over non-therapeutic infant circumcision have become frequent occurrences in our time. Recently, an Israeli religious court fined a mother of a one-year-old for refusing to circumcise her son. We all remember last year’s circumcision controversy in Germany.
By Kelly Hewinson
To mark the publication of the ninth edition of the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine (OHCM), here are nine facts you may not know about the cheese and onion.
What is “fetal personhood”? What role does poverty and welfare policy play in shaping reproductive rights? Questions about reproductive rights are just as complex–and controversial–as they were in the Roe v. Wade-era. The following is adapted from Rickie Solinger’s Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know
By Michael Hochman, MD, MPH
With the issuing of its updated report on the management of lipids, the American Heart Association (AHA) hoped to provide a clear message to health care providers and consumers about how to use lipid-lowering medications. Instead, the new recommendations have been mired in controversy due to concerns about the validity of the data used in the report.
By Kelly Hewinson
Applying for medical school becomes harder every year. Many would-be doctors are discouraged by mounting competition for places, achieving A* grades, spiraling student fees, and negative headlines about the NHS.
By Andrew Cliff and Matthew Smallman-Raynor
For over two centuries, the landscape that lies on the marchland of two very ancient subjects – geography and medicine – has been explored from several directions.
By Murat Emre
Recently researchers from the MRC Toxicology Unit based at the University Of Leicester provided “food for hope”: Moreno et al reported in Science Translational Medicine, that an oral treatment targeting the “unfolded protein response” prevented neurodegeneration and clinical disease in an animal model, in “prion-infected mice”, a model of prion diseases which occur also in humans
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?