Over the past month, a number of researchers, institutions, and pharmaceutical companies have come under pressure for relationships between medical research, clinical treatment, and corporate profits. An investigation by the New York Times and ProPublica looked into Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s chief medical officer, Dr. José Baselga, who has since resigned, and his failure to disclose important financial relationships …
Category Archives: Web Roundups
Web Roundup: Annals of Injury and Dispossession
In a 2013 essay in American Anthropologist, Andrea Muehlebach summarized the concept of “precarity” as “a shorthand for…the multiple forms of nightmarish dispossession and injury that our age entails.” Indeed, the last month has seen a collection of events, acute and ongoing, that characterize the precariousness of the historical present. In the U.S., July 26 marked the court-imposed deadline …
Web Roundup: Abortion Access
This month, and especially this past week, has seen immense media coverage of abortion access, both in the United States and abroad. A recent study out of UCSF has shown that abortion is extremely safe, with lower post-procedure ER visits than many other routine surgical procedures. However, despite the safety of this medical procedure, abortion is still highly …
Web Roundup: Women, Withdrawal, and Antidepressants
In April, an article in the New York Times caused a stir with the headline, “Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit.” The piece begins with a young woman who “would hunch over the kitchen table, steady her hands and draw a bead of liquid from a vial with a small dropper.” Over a period of months of trying …
Web Round Up: Clinical Trials on Trial
This month saw breaking news web-wide on one aspect of medicine that has drawn critiques and support from both social scientists and biomedical experts: clinical trials. Drug trials overseen by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (see clinicaltrials.gov) and often executed by research universities and hospitals rarely if ever include major segments of the United States population. …
Web Roundup: Death, Life, and the Immortal Brain
Among the many tech-focused booths at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) early this year, one stood out in particular: an exhibition of manufactured bodies, or “sleeves,” into which someone could theoretically download their consciousness. The exhibition was a promotion for the new Netflix series Altered Carbon, a science fiction saga set 300 years in the future where individuals can …