Perspectives in Biology and Medicine最新文献

On Becoming the "Good Physician": Lessons from a Commencement Address. 如何成为“好医生”：毕业典礼演讲的教训。

IF 0.7 4区医学

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Pub Date : 2026-01-01

Lainie Friedman Ross

引用次数: 0

Measuring Age: Chronology and Its Alternatives. 测量年龄：年表及其替代品。

IF 0.7 4区医学

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Pub Date : 2026-01-01 DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2026.a985812

Elise Berman, William P Brandon

引用次数: 0

Existential Competence: Redefining Clinical Excellence Beyond Health Optimization. 生存能力：重新定义超越健康优化的临床卓越。

IF 0.7 4区医学

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Pub Date : 2026-01-01 DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2026.a985816

Stephen Buetow

{"title":"Existential Competence: Redefining Clinical Excellence Beyond Health Optimization.","authors":"Stephen Buetow","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2026.a985816","DOIUrl":"10.1353/pbm.2026.a985816","url":null,"abstract":"Clinicians often focus on measurable health improvements, while patients may prioritize other values, such as autonomy, comfort, and quality of life. This divergence can generate tension between technical excellence and meaningful care. This article introduces \"existential competence\" as a professional skill for navigating this tension. Existential competence helps patients align health-care decisions with what gives their lives purpose, recognizing health as only one source of human flourishing. Clinicians cultivate this skill by respecting patient choices-healthy or not-that reflect the patient's core values and remain within legal bounds, assuming stable preferences, decision-making capacity, and understanding of the risks. Implementation of existential competence requires expanding health care from risk management to co-stewardship of patients' life narratives, while maintaining clinical accountability. Two approaches are considered: repositioning health as one value among many, versus redefining health to encompass existential well-being. Ultimately, existential competence reorients health care toward helping patients thrive by integrating biomedical expertise with the pursuit of meaningful living.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"69 1","pages":"88-105"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147576588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Guinea Pigs and Semplica Girls: On Degradation, Exploitation, and Clinical Research. 豚鼠和桑普利卡女孩：关于退化、剥削和临床研究。

IF 0.7 4区医学

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Pub Date : 2026-01-01 DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2026.a985810

Carl Elliott

引用次数: 0

Magnanimity in Medicine: The Role of an Ancient Virtue in Health Care. 医学中的宽宏大量：一种古老美德在保健中的作用。

IF 0.7 4区医学

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Pub Date : 2026-01-01 DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2026.a985813

Justin R Hawkins, Celina Sourbeer, Lydia S Dugdale

引用次数: 0

The Final Act of Care: Accuracy in Cause of Death Statements. 最后的护理：死亡原因陈述的准确性。

IF 0.7 4区医学

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Pub Date : 2026-01-01 DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2026.a985817

Johnna P Wellesley

{"title":"The Final Act of Care: Accuracy in Cause of Death Statements.","authors":"Johnna P Wellesley","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2026.a985817","DOIUrl":"10.1353/pbm.2026.a985817","url":null,"abstract":"Death certificates act as verified records concluding the administrative aspects of a person's life. In the US, the death certificate includes essential biographical information about the decedent, including the manner and cause of death. To some, the cause of death may be a procedural step necessary to obtain a death certificate, and where there is not an ensuing forensic investigation, the cause of death may even seem immaterial. But specificity in determining the cause of death is crucial to epidemiological and public health initiatives and for the maintenance of accurate mortality records. This article argues that inaccuracies in cause of death determinations are harmful: they are detrimental to the professional commitments physicians owe their patients and distort the lived experiences of the deceased. Inaccuracy in vital statistics affects individuals and families by misrepresenting the physiological and biological processes leading to death and potentially altering the deceased person's life story. While there is extensive literature exploring the challenges faced by clinicians in determining the cause of death, this article focuses on modifications made to the cause of death-whether consciously through deliberate intent to conceal, or unconsciously through error or omission-where the death may be socially stigmatizing.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"69 1","pages":"106-125"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147576101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

In Patients' Hands: Smartphones as Medical Infrastructure. 病人手中：智能手机作为医疗基础设施。

IF 0.7 4区医学

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Pub Date : 2026-01-01 DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2026.a1002736

Kiran Mohan, Jeremy A Greene, Daniel B Kramer

{"title":"In Patients' Hands: Smartphones as Medical Infrastructure.","authors":"Kiran Mohan, Jeremy A Greene, Daniel B Kramer","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2026.a1002736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2026.a1002736","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the ways in which smartphones have emerged as essential pieces of medical infrastructure that increasingly connect patients to their health-care providers, directly interface with medical devices, and bear responsibility for care delivery. While clinical care increasingly depends on smartphones as continuously available platforms for monitoring and communication, smartphones themselves are not regulated as components of health-care infrastructure. The authors examine the historical and cultural context for the rise of smartphones into this role and consider the policy and ethical implications, including potential hazards, of this subtle but consequential shift. Recognizing smartphones as infrastructure reframes a range of issues that might otherwise appear to be isolated or app-level problems, including the transfer of technological, financial, and privacy-related burdens onto patients themselves. The authors explore how smartphones complicate existing frameworks for medical device regulation, patient autonomy, surveillance, and health equity, while also considering potential ethical and regulatory responses to these emerging challenges.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"69 3","pages":"383-406"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149118743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Making Fun of Medicine: Resisting Medicine's Principalities. 调侃医学：抵制医学的公民权。

IF 0.7 4区医学

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Pub Date : 2026-01-01 DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2026.a985815

Ashley Moyse, Benjamin Frush, Thomas Sieberhagen, John Brewer Eberly

{"title":"Making Fun of Medicine: Resisting Medicine's Principalities.","authors":"Ashley Moyse, Benjamin Frush, Thomas Sieberhagen, John Brewer Eberly","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2026.a985815","DOIUrl":"10.1353/pbm.2026.a985815","url":null,"abstract":"The figure of the \"medical clown\" is a theologically and anthropologically charged vocation necessary for moral critique and healing in contemporary medicine. Drawing on the Oglala Sioux Heyoka and the circus clown, or holy fool, the authors distinguish between external critics-philosophers and theologians who unmask medicine's principalities through folly-and internal actors-clinicians who subvert dehumanizing logics from within. Against corporate, efficiency-driven models that deform the healing vocation, both roles embody prophetic reversal, exposing absurdities and reorienting practice toward possibilities of redemption that could not otherwise be seen from within the logic of medicine's current priorities and principalities. The holy fool destabilizes the status quo through provocative critique; the Heyoka, grounded in communal trust, rouses through loving contrariness. Together, they witness to medicine's eschatological promises: healing as relational and resistant to commodification. By reclaiming the sacred work of \"walking backwards,\" these clowns and fools invite a re-formation of medical imagination, challenging and shaping practitioners who dwell with suffering to resist the seductions of a system that is forgetting its calling.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"69 1","pages":"72-87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147576603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The Bioethicist as Truth Teller: A Commentary on Carl Elliott. 作为真理讲述者的生命伦理学家：卡尔·艾略特评论。

IF 0.7 4区医学

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Pub Date : 2026-01-01 DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2026.a985811

Arthur W Frank

引用次数: 0

Antecedents of Concepts in Modern Immunology: Experiential Frameworks in 18th- and Early 19th-Century Autobiographical Accounts. 现代免疫学概念的前身：18世纪和19世纪早期自传体叙述中的经验框架。

IF 0.7 4区医学

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Pub Date : 2026-01-01

Whitney Arnold

{"title":"Antecedents of Concepts in Modern Immunology: Experiential Frameworks in 18th- and Early 19th-Century Autobiographical Accounts.","authors":"Whitney Arnold","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"This article proposes autobiography as a productive lens through which to examine concepts of immunology, as the self-oriented conceptual focus of autobiography shares key affinities with theories of immune selfhood that have underpinned much of the work in modern immunology. British and French autobiographies written in the late 18th and early 19th centuries-a period at the crossroads of older humoral theory and new scientific and medical knowledge-describe early symptom-and experience-based conceptualizations of immunity, as well as subjectively defined and value-laden conceptualizations of health. Notably, while the autobiographical accounts precede the late 19th-century work that established the foundations of modern immunology, authors' accounts of health maintenance, disease prevention, and disease elimination resonate with present-day immunological concepts and nonspecialist constructions of immunity. In analyzing how the authors conceptualize and assign meaning to what we now understand as immunity-related processes and practices, the article brings to light theoretical parallels between the autobiographical accounts and concepts in modern immunology.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"69 2","pages":"181-196"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148702768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0