Clik here to view.
Links of interest: Suicide
Surveillance for Violent Deaths — National Violent Death Reporting System, 16 States, 2007 (CDC) The latest official statistics on US violent deaths, including suicides, from the CDC. The report covers...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Suicide among veterans is an “absolute crisis”
According to the Times, 347 soldiers were killed last year, and 381 committed suicide. Legislation to provide funds for the mental health of military personnel and veterans was removed from a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Atul Gawande: Modern death and dying
An article in The New Yorker by Atul Gawande on how modern clinical medicine has turned death and dying into an experience we would not wish on our enemies. This is so much in need of being said. And...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I am saddened by the death of Tony Judt
I feel as if I’ve been on a death watch for Tony Judt all year. In his January essay, “Night,” in The New York Review of Books, he discussed his 2008 diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS),...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tony Judt — continued
More tributes to Tony Judt following his death on Friday. Tony Judt, Historian And Author, Dies At 62 (NPR) Focuses on the controversy over Judt’s position on Israel. “I think he was one of the most...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Palliative care: Lost and recovered
Here’s an excerpt from the third and last part of the interview with me by Dr. Lisa Marcucci at Inside Surgery. The question asked for a little known fact from the history of medicine. Easing the pain...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Knowing when you’ll die: Tony Judt’s last interview
Tony Judt died on August 6. He had been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in September of 2008. Over the years he had been both guest and guest host on the Charlie Rose show. Rose interviewed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Should grief be labeled and treated as depression?
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is in the process of revising the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) – the psychiatrist’s bible. Its last incarnation — known as DSM...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Grey’s Anatomy donates a body to medicine
While studying anatomy, I once spent a day with a cadaver whose stomach — normally located in the abdomen below the rib cage — had migrated up through the diaphragm and was now located behind the ribs....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tony Judt lives on
I miss Tony Judt. As I read the news every day, I speculate on what he would have to say. I was thinking of him during the mid-term elections as I listened to blatant misinformation about the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The day Neda Soltan died: Inside an Iranian hospital
A doctor in Iran relates what transpired when protest victims were brought to her hospital. I was on duty as a surgical intern that night when a sudden rush of injured victims flooded the emergency...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The absurdity of widowhood
The New Yorker published a beautiful piece by Joyce Carol Oates on the death of her husband, Raymond Smith. Oates and Smith, who had been married 48 years, were in a car accident three years ago. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Decisions about CPR
Thaddeus Pope quotes this sentence from a 1988 letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. It seems we have lost sight of the difference between patients who die because their hearts...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Baby RB, Baby Isaiah, Baby Joseph
These days, both the oldest and the youngest die in hospitals. Baby RB suffered from a rare subtype of a genetic neuromuscular condition, congenital myasthenic syndrome, and spent his entire life – he...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bruckner on the family, being gay, and AIDS activism
I recently read and very much enjoyed Pascal Bruckner’s newly translated book, Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy (originally published in 2000). Here’s a passage from the chapter “The Fat,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy — August 2014
The August issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy does not have a specific theme. The nine articles address a number of quite interesting issues, among them: How existential psychotherapy can...
View Article
