conversations about medicine and life
We publish a range of perspectives on health and wellbeing, especially reflective work which fleshes out the biomedical version of illness and disability.
Alyssa Kennedy and Barbara Brookes
Alyssa Kennedy, studying Medical History, has been examining the late nineteenth century casebooks of the Dunedin hospital held at Archives New Zealand (Dunedin Branch). She chose to examine uterine complaints. Her findings remind us of the different reproductive experience of women in the past.
Sue Wootton
Recently I talked at the Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival as part of a panel of health practitioners who write. Called Word Balm, our session set out to explore what language contributes to the practice of medicine. At the end of a wide-ranging conversation, chair Barbara Brookes called for questions from the audience. A woman raised her hand.
This is all very well,” she said, “but how come my GP looks at the computer screen, not at me, throughout the consultation?”
Dr Tree Cocks
Doctors in Denial by Ron Jones is a meticulously researched and perceptive account of the “unfortunate experiment” entailing non-treatment of cervical carcinoma in situ that occasioned The Cartwright Inquiry. It is an account of two cancers really, one physical and the other moral.
Jones has gathered together an enormous amount of detailed information from the 1920s to the present day. Because his research has tapped many sources and because he is interested in human dynamics, the chronology sometimes takes a complex route. I found it a multifaceted detective story, to uncover the why and how of the tragedy.
[Read more…] about ‘Doctors in Denial’: an account of two cancers, one physical and the other moral’
Tui Bevin
I can save lives even though I’ll never perform heart surgery or discover a cure for cancer.
Four years ago I discovered my perfect volunteer job: plasma donor. My blood group was suitable, I’m not too skinny and I like being waited on with cups of tea while I have nothing more important to do for three quarters of an hour than putting my feet up and reading. As community service goes, donating plasma is no hardship, if you don’t mind being jabbed and weighed regularly.
Beatrice Hale
‘Care’ can be a misnomer. It should mean compassion, love, looking after, affection. All the positives in one word.
But it doesn’t.
My great-aunt, Georgina, lived for many years in The Mitchell Hospital, a nineteenth century Presbyterian Church supported ‘sheltered care’ facility. It was located on The Chanonry, the street which had grown up beside St Machar’s Cathedral in Old Aberdeen, a once independent township with a history of more than 1,000 years, and with many finds dating from about 4000 BC.
David Perez
After 40 years in oncology practice has my experience lived up to initial expectations? My answer is a big YES! On the scientific front the explosion in the understanding of genomics and the defective genes that initiate cancer growth has led to new therapies which target the defective genes and generally have fewer toxic effects than chemotherapy. These so-called targeted therapies are likely to have their main impact on suppressing cancer growth rather than eradicating the disease but prolonged suppression of cancer can be very beneficial and can be compared to the prolonged suppression of the HIV virus in AIDS. Patients with advanced cancer that will ultimately prove fatal are now living several years longer than previously due to better cancer controlling therapies. The rapid progress in the understanding of cancer genetics will ensure there will be a proliferation of new cancer interventions over the next 20 years. Other advances include the identification of defective genes that cause familial cancer which then allows preventive action including screening to be undertaken. Another recent cancer prevention strategy is the use of vaccines against viruses that can cause cancer such as cervical and liver cancers.
