{"title":"Helen Keller and the Burden of Wonder.","authors":"David Serlin","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2024.a942081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2024.a942081","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This essay examines the concept of \"wonder\" in relation to the life of deafblind author and activist Helen Keller (1880-1968), who was often billed in popular media as the \"Eighth Wonder of the World.\" For Keller, being known as a \"wonder\" was not always a positive attribute: the term, far from being neutral, conceals the uneven power dynamic between the one doing the wondering and the one who inspires the wonder. Using excerpts from a range of sources-from Keller's second autobiography The World I Live in (1908) to hotelier Conrad Hilton's autobiography Be My Guest (1957)-the author argues that Keller was never a passive object of other people's wonder but a proactive agent of her own wonder-making. In the end, Keller endured the burden of being known as the \"Eighth Wonder\" while also resisting its cumulative effects.</p>","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"67 4","pages":"588-594"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142632795","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}
Mark Christopher Navin, Jason Adam Wasserman, Douglas S Diekema, Thaddeus M Pope
{"title":"Limits on Parental Discretion in Medical Decision-Making: pediatric intervention principles converge.","authors":"Mark Christopher Navin, Jason Adam Wasserman, Douglas S Diekema, Thaddeus M Pope","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2024.a929023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2024.a929023","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Pediatric intervention principles help clinicians and health-care institutions determine appropriate responses when parents' medical decisions place children at risk. Several intervention principles have been proposed and defended in the pediatric ethics literature. These principles may appear to provide conflicting guidance, but much of that conflict is superficial. First, seemingly different pediatric intervention principles sometimes converge on the same guidance. Second, these principles often aim to solve different problems in pediatrics or to operate in different background conditions. The potential for convergence between intervention principles-or at least an absence of conflict between them-matters for both the theory and practice of pediatric ethics. This article builds on the recent work of a diverse group of pediatric ethicists tasked with identifying consensus guidelines for pediatric decision-making.</p>","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"67 2","pages":"277-289"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141201381","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}
{"title":"Sacred-in-Practice: A Framework for Teaching Religion, Health, and Medicine","authors":"Barry F. Saunders","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2023.a909725","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2023.a909725","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: This essay proposes an unconventional approach to teaching \"religion and medicine\" to American medical students. Received frameworks for such teaching—articulated around faith denomination or \"spirituality\"—may imply that religiosities and their health effects are grounded in theology or transcendence, respectively. These frameworks may reify, or misrepresent relationships between, religion and science—for example, in supporting notions of conflict, or of an essentially secular character of technical progress. They can neglect ways in which biomedicine and its institutions are themselves engaged with and productive of religious values. In order to move toward fuller student appreciation of diverse religious materialities and embodiments in health and biomedicine, the essay proposes \" the sacred, in practice \" as an organizing rubric. This pedagogical intervention pivots on notions of sacrality in anthropologies of religion and offers students a wide path to consider a spectrum of material, gestural conditions, and activities—transformative techniques, intensely valued objects, trusted texts, rituals—that mark and propagate religious valences and commitments within and around contemporary biomedicine. This sacred-in-practice approach meshes with standard theological and spiritual framings of the religion/health/medicine nexus, yet offers more capacious and flexible connections to work for which medical students are training, involving vulnerable bodies and material technologies of tremendous life- and world-shaping potency.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"128 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735571","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}
{"title":"Futures of Care: Care Technologies and Graphic Medicine","authors":"Sathyaraj Venkatesan, Livine Ancy A","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2023.a909731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2023.a909731","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: Assistive care technologies, developed to replace, support, or extend human capabilities and to address the surging demands of care, have been gaining prominence recently. The current trend summons a posthuman approach through decentering the privileged role of humans in several spaces of caregiving, such as hospitals and eldercare homes. The existence of these cutting-edge assistive technologies, exciting as they are, hints at a possible future when the distinction between humans and technology will be blurred, thus transforming care relations. However, these technological advances carry equal promises and dangers. While care robots may reduce the burden of caregiving, they also threaten to minimize human contact with vulnerable populations. This critical assessment reviews technological advances in care and close-reads several single-panel cartoons to theorize the impact of technologies on caring relations. The article also examines the neoliberal underpinnings of such technologies and the moral dangers of their unreflective use.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735800","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}
{"title":"Imagine This: Happy Aging in America","authors":"Tia Powell","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2023.a909730","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2023.a909730","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: This essay explores what it means to age happily, beginning with concepts of aging and happiness and proceeding to factors that promote or undermine happy aging. Relationships, contribution, and personal growth all add value to an aging life. Community also matters, as does the acceptance that a happy older age requires neither perfect health nor immense wealth.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735979","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}
{"title":"Negative Impacts of Taegyo : Feminist and Disability Perspectives","authors":"Hajung Lee","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2023.a909729","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2023.a909729","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: This study examines the origin and religious roots of taegyo , Korean traditional prenatal education, and raises concerns about potential negative impacts of contemporary taegyo practice from feminist and disability perspectives. Taegyo has been accepted without much criticism due to its deep integration into prenatal care culture, and most existing literature focuses on taegyo 's positive impacts on fetal health and development from scientific or nursing perspectives. This article analyzes a 19th-century taegyo manual, Taegyo Singi , and Seon and Won Buddhist literatures on taegyo in order to understand the religio-cultural concepts and contexts of taegyo . The article then discusses the potential downsides of taegyo practice today, considering its patriarchal, mother-blaming, ablest roots in Korean history and culture. The author raises concerns about social oppression, the control of women's bodily autonomy, and the disproportionate responsibility burden that taegyo places on Korean women. The article concludes with suggestions for future research and for well-balanced taegyo practice.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735792","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}
{"title":"Disputing Darwin: On Piloerection and Mental Illness","authors":"Pieter R. Adriaens","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2023.a909723","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2023.a909723","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: Most of Charles Darwin's ideas have withstood the test of time, but some of them turned out to be dead ends. This article focuses on one such dead end: Darwin's ideas about the connection between piloerection and mental illness. Piloerection is a medical umbrella term to refer to a number of phenomena in which our hair tends to stand on end. Darwin was one of the first scientists to study it systematically. In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), he discusses piloerection in the context of his analysis of the expressions involved in fear and anger, relying heavily on the evidence provided by one of his correspondents, the British psychiatrist James Crichton Browne. This essay reveals how Darwin's initial doubts about the similarity between piloerection in animals and psychiatric patients were eased when studying photographic portraits of female psychiatric patients sent to him by Crichton Browne. It considers arguments against Darwin's reading of these portraits and the apparent contrast between this reading and his own skepticism, in later years, about the value of documentary photography. The article concludes with some notes regarding the reception of Darwin's ideas about psychopathology.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735784","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}
{"title":"Degendering Parents on Birth Certificates","authors":"Timothy E. Murphy, Jennifer A. Parks","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2023.a909728","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2023.a909728","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: Birth certificates typically designate parents as \"mothers\" or \"fathers,\" although some US states offer nongendered designations. The authors argue that gendered characterizations offer scant legal or moral value and that states should move to degender parental status on birth certificates but retain that information in registrations of birth. Registrations of birth identify the person giving birth to a child, when, and where, and they report demographic and health information useful for civic and public health purposes. Birth certificates typically report a child's name, sex, date and location of birth, and parentage so far as known. As documents establishing parents' standing in relation to children and vice versa, as well as age and presumptive citizenship, birth certificates add no legal or moral value by gendering parents. Gendering parents on birth certificates obliges the state to rely on exclusionary criteria of \"mother\" and \"father.\" By contrast, degendering parental status withdraws the need for such criteria and confers benefits on people with transgender and nonbinary identities, as well as undercutting any problematic presumption that parents have responsibilities to their children qua mother or qua father.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735985","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}
{"title":"Futures of Care: Care Technologies and Graphic Medicine","authors":"Sathyaraj Venkatesan, Livine Ancy A","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2023.a909732","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2023.a909732","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: Assistive care technologies, developed to replace, support, or extend human capabilities and to address the surging demands of care, have been gaining prominence recently. The current trend summons a posthuman approach through decentering the privileged role of humans in several spaces of caregiving, such as hospitals and eldercare homes. The existence of these cutting-edge assistive technologies, exciting as they are, hints at a possible future when the distinction between humans and technology will be blurred, thus transforming care relations. However, these technological advances carry equal promises and dangers. While care robots may reduce the burden of caregiving, they also threaten to minimize human contact with vulnerable populations. This critical assessment reviews technological advances in care and close-reads several single-panel cartoons to theorize the impact of technologies on caring relations. The article also examines the neoliberal underpinnings of such technologies and the moral dangers of their unreflective use.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735802","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}
{"title":"In the Tradition of William Osler: A New Biohumanistic Model of Psychiatry","authors":"S. Nassir Ghaemi","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2023.a909724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2023.a909724","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: William Osler (1849–1919) is often considered the most influential physician in the emergence of science-based medicine. However, his approach to clinical medicine tends to be misunderstood, and its relevance to psychiatry has not been explored systematically. Osler's approach to the patient had four components: biological reductionism about disease, a scientific approach to clinical diagnosis, therapeutic conservatism, and a humanistic approach to the person. These concepts conflict with the pragmatic, eclectic, anti-reductionistic assumptions of contemporary psychiatry, as codified in its interpretation of a \"biopsychosocial\" model. This model leads to unscientific practice, with excessive use of medications given for symptoms, and inattention to identifying and treating diseases. This article suggests that implementing Osler's philosophy of medicine in psychiatry would greatly benefit the latter. It would inaugurate a new \"biohumanistic\" approach to psychiatry.","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135735989","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}