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(Re)considering the “Alternatives”
Late in the last century, a long-form essay by Arnold Relman, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, appeared in The New Republic (December 13, 1998). Titled “A Trip to Stonesville: Andrew Weil, the Boom in Alternative Medicine, and the...
The Making of "The Making of a Tropical Disease" – The Sequel
I was approached by my editor at the Johns Hopkins University Press about preparing a revised second edition of my book The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria. The book was the first volume in the Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease...
The Eye Book
In an age where you can search for anything on the Internet, you may wonder why you need The Eye Book. Why would I even bother taking the time to update the first edition published over twenty years ago? Well, twenty years ago when the Johns Hopkins Press...
Killing Season: A Paramedic's Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Opioid Epidemic
When I started as a 911 paramedic on the streets of Hartford, Connecticut over twenty-five years ago, I believed drug users were victims of their own character flaws. They lacked personal responsibility and their behavior was criminal. Keep using drugs, I’d...
Corporatizing American Healthcare: How We Lost Our Health Care System
A number of career pathways appeared before me after I finished medical school and advanced specialty training. I chose Academic Emergency Medicine at a University Medical Center, which provided time for research, teaching, and direct patient care. Over the...
Preparing for a Better End – Q&A with authors Dan Morhaim, MD and Shelley Morhaim
Why did you write Preparing for a Better End: Expert Lessons on Death and Dying for You and Your Loved Ones? People need a simple, yet comprehensive guide to managing advance care planning, and this need has been heightened by the impact of the pandemic...
The US Health Care Industry and COVID-19
Although the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 contains only 15 genes in comparison with 30,000 in the human genome, it has been a powerful adversary. Indeed, the core paradox of U.S. health care – that our nation has the worst population health among high-income...
Helping Older Individuals Manage Anxiety and Depression during the COVID-19 Crisis
By Mark D. Miller, M.D., and Charles F. Reynolds III, M.D. Let’s first define “older” as those at least age 60. This segment of the population is on track to soon become 22% of the whole. It is a heterogeneous group comprised of a reasonably healthy, mobile...
Writing Can Change Health Care
For more than 20 years, the “Narrative Matters” section of the health policy journal Health Affairs has showcased some of the most compelling personal stories in health care. I have edited the section since the fall of 2012, following in the footsteps of Ellen...
It's Alive!: The state of Frankenscholarship
To help celebrate the bicentennial of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein in 2018, Literature and Medicine published a themed issue on "Chemistry, Disability, and Frankenstein." The issue featured 11 essays covering a wide swath of subjects related to the famous...