{"title":"Scars and Stains: Lessons from Intensive Care, by Mark ZY Tan. Oakamoor, UK: Hawksmoor Publishing, 2024.","authors":"Hannah Scott","doi":"10.1007/s10912-025-09932-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-025-09932-x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143013836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Obstetric Sonar, Media Archaeology, Feminist Critique.","authors":"Rose Rowson","doi":"10.1007/s10912-024-09926-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09926-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The snub-nosed, reclining, and serene image of the fetus is commonplace in cultural representations and analyses of obstetric ultrasound. Yet following the provocation of various feminist scholars, taking the fetal sonogram as the automatic object of concern vis-à-vis ultrasound cedes ground to anti-abortionists, who deploy fetal images to argue that life begins at conception and that the unborn are rights bearing subjects who must be protected. How might feminists escape this analytical trap, where discussions of ultrasonics must always be engaged in the act of debunking? This article orients away from the problem of fetal representation by employing a method which may appear to be wildly unsuitable: media archaeology. Media archaeologists typically reject the body and the human sensory apparatus as the default subject of media and argue that the interpretive methods of the humanities are incapable of accounting for the ontology of machines. I propose, however, that media archaeological methods provide a necessary vocabulary to attend to obstetric ultrasound outside of iconography. I develop and deploy a media archaeological method that integrates feminist concerns-including advocation of subjugated persons and the making visible of maligned subjects-to examine the ultrasonic experiments performed by gynecologist Ian Donald on working-class Glaswegian women during the 1950s and 1960s, ultimately arguing that, in the case of ultrasound, there can be no separation between technical process and the historically situated body.</p>","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142985135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Misreading Medicine: Statutory Prohibitions of Abortion for Disability.","authors":"Megan Glasmann","doi":"10.1007/s10912-024-09925-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09925-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abortion prohibitions in some states include carve-outs based on the medical condition of either the mother or the fetus. These carve-outs, however, may be couched in limiting language structured by legislators rather than in language understandable in the context of medical care. In circumstances where legislative bodies fail to adequately incorporate medical professionals in the drafting of medical laws, the resulting vagueness or ambiguity may lead to a lack of utility or viability. This paper considers the consequences of such legislative misreading of medicine. It does so with a particular example, Utah's abortion trigger law, 2020 Senate Bill 174 (S.B. 174). S.B. 174 was enacted in 2020 (currently enjoined pending the outcome of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah v. State of Utah) and includes an exception for serious fetal anomaly-in other words, disability. While Utah is not alone in its inclusion of a disability exception for abortion, S.B. 174 is unique in the language it uses to carve out this exception: the law requires that the fetus has a \"uniformly diagnosable and uniformly lethal\" defect. This article explores the medical-legal mismatch in S.B. 174 through an analysis of the statute's legislative history and its language, an academic and legal database review, and an application of the statutory language to multiple serious genetic diagnoses. In doing so, this paper unpacks just how mismatched these terms are and reveals the massive gap the law will leave between the legal consequences and the medical realities of abortion.</p>","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142956518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Medical Gaze Sans Bioethics: Revisiting Enslaved Black Women's Medical Bondage in Behind the Sheet.","authors":"Sruthi Madhu, Soumya Jose","doi":"10.1007/s10912-024-09921-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09921-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The birth of modern gynecology in the USA is preceded by experimental exploitations of Black women's bodies in the mid-nineteenth century, entailing a long-drawn extraction of \"reproductive knowledge\" from enslaved patients. Charly Evon Simpson's Behind the Sheet (2019) stages the history of medical bondage of Black enslaved women in antebellum South, reconstructing the events that led to the surgical innovation for vesico-vaginal fistula. Scrutinizing Simpson's dramatization of the event, this paper prompts inquiries into the interplay of power and consent between the physician and the enslaved patient in plantation healthcare, highlighting the need to reexamine bioethical principles. Using the theoretical framework of medical gaze propounded by Foucault and further developed by Susan Greenhalgh, the paper analyzes the operation of white patriarchal power and the construction of physician heroism in the medical sphere. Investigating the realm of bodily autonomy in the context of medical bondage, the paper attempts to render a \"herstorical\" standpoint on the contributions of enslaved Black women to the field of gynecology.</p>","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142928228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Who Is responsible for the Opioid Crisis? A Discourse Analysis of Responsibility Claims in Medicine.","authors":"Ariane Hanemaayer, Shahina Parvin","doi":"10.1007/s10912-024-09918-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09918-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The opioid crisis has continued despite efforts to intervene on its identified causes. In this article, we analyse responsibility claims in pain and addiction medical journals concerning the opioid crisis. Selected journals represent the opioid crisis as a medical problem. Using the method of discourse analysis, we examine 32 sampled articles from 3 medical journals published over the past decade to understand how the cause of the opioid crisis is represented. Drawing upon the sociological concept of responsibilization, we observe and explain two patterns in the responsibility claims. Pain medicine specialty journals tended to responsibilize physicians for their part in the crisis, whereas the addiction journal directed responsibility toward users. Despite some differences in proposed solutions, statements in both journals tend to responsibilize individual behaviours as the cause of the crisis. Accordingly, each article suggested solutions that target these behaviours. We argue that by focusing on individual behaviours, other factors and social conditions related to the crisis are omitted, including pharmaceutical companies, regulators, and health system infrastructure. We advocate for the need to redefine the assumptions related to the cause of the opioid crisis in order to consider alternative solutions.</p>","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142910906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Epidemics That Unveil and Accelerate Love: Rebirth via Disease in W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil.","authors":"Hawk Chang","doi":"10.1007/s10912-024-09920-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09920-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The outbreak and impact of COVID-19 alert humans to the fragility of life and interpersonal bonds. The pandemic and its aftermath bring us not only disease and death but fear and suspicion. Enforced lockdown, quarantine, and isolation worldwide hampered and slowed down human interaction. However, epidemics also prompt us to rediscover valuable qualities inherent in our everyday lives despite the many problems. The retrieval of love in Maugham's The Painted Veil (1925) is a case in point. By reading Maugham's The Painted Veil via the lens of epidemics and their impact on humanity, this paper discusses how disease can precipitate rather than impede human interaction. The discussion will help shed light on the meanings and implications of love during and after epidemics.</p>","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142822753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Serving Refugees, Rediscovering Medicine, and Recovering from Burnout.","authors":"Malwina Huzarska","doi":"10.1007/s10912-024-09922-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09922-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, I found myself struggling with debilitating professional burnout as a physician assistant (PA) in emergency medicine. Despite initial fears and uncertainties, I chose to volunteer at a refugee center in Wroclaw, Poland, where I provided medical care to Ukrainian war victims. This experience proved to be a transformative journey, reigniting my passion for patient-centered care and addressing my burnout. Establishing a profound connection between medical care and humanity reminded me of the reasons I entered the medical profession. Practicing medicine in a refugee center, free from the constraints of the healthcare business model, allowed me to reconnect with the core values of my profession. This experience underscored the therapeutic potential of volunteering as a means to combat professional burnout and fostered a renewed commitment to patient care upon my return home. In an era where clinician burnout is increasingly prevalent, this narrative explores the importance of rekindling one's passion for medicine by returning to its fundamental purpose: compassionate, patient-centered care.</p>","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142814265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Doctor, Will You Pray for Me? Medicine, Chaplains, and Healing the Whole Person, by Robert Klitzman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.","authors":"Benjamin W Frush","doi":"10.1007/s10912-024-09919-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09919-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142807986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cut Bodies: Unica Zürn's Agential (Sur)Realism.","authors":"Skye Shannon Savage","doi":"10.1007/s10912-024-09914-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09914-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article argues that mid-century Surrealist German author Unica Zürn's writing on the fetus and pregnancy anticipates New Materialist analyses of the liveliness of matter and the interactions of biology and history. Using philosopher-physicist Karen Barad's theories of Agential Realism as a lens, I unite a close reading of key moments in Zürn's oeuvre with an examination of medical practices in the midcentury and the lingering history of Nazi eugenics, demonstrating how politics and science come to both shape and deform the body in Zürn's prose. Through the interactions of both language and material, the bodies of the mother and fetus begin to double each other, and holocaust atrocities and abortion practices take on uncanny resonances.</p>","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142773558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The State of Surrogacy in New York: A New National Prototype, New Patrons, New Perils?","authors":"Nancy King Reame","doi":"10.1007/s10912-024-09913-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09913-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Four decades after the Baby M case that led to the prohibition of commercial surrogacy in New York, much has changed in the infertility industry. Advanced technologies including the advent of gestational carrier pregnancies had made it easier and more efficient to create IVF embryos at a distance and over time, accelerating a boom in cross-border, reproductive services and allowing compensated surrogacy to flourish in a growing number of surrogacy-friendly states and beyond. For international couples, the USA has become a hot spot for \"circumvention tourism\" given its first-rate medical care, ample supply of willing gestational carriers, burgeoning interest in family building among gay couples, and immediate USA citizenship for the child. This commentary reviews selected sociocultural and global forces that helped set the stage for the passage of the Child-Parent Security Act in New York state in 2021, and the efforts by its opponents for stronger protections not only for gestational carriers, but for gamete donors and the donor-conceived offspring. I argue that despite more responsive medical and legal guidelines, the high market demand and economic profits, combined with the lack of regulatory teeth, faulty assumptions about health risks and decision-making autonomy, and inadequate research on long-term health outcomes, continue to make compensated gestational surrogacy in the state of New York a high-risk venture without adequate informed consent. Possible unintended consequences and future research questions are proposed.</p>","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142773564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}