What the Public Might Learn from Kate Middleton, the Latest “Famous Patient”
There was a time when the last thing a celebrity would do would be to go public with details of a major illness. After all, it’s hard enough dealing with a grave diagnosis and often complicated treatments than to also announce them to the world. And health information has always been treated as confidential, shared […]
Arthur Ashe and AIDS: Did the Public Have the Right to Know His Diagnosis?
Do prominent public figures who are ill have some type of responsibility to reveal their diseases, or are they entitled to the same privacy as “ordinary” people? That question exploded into the public sphere in April 1992 when tennis star and humanitarian Arthur Ashe learned that a newspaper was about to make public his previously […]
Drunken Driving Is a Persistent Problem but There May Be a Technological Solution
Drunken driving control efforts have sputtered out in recent years with more than 11,000 preventable deaths now occurring annually. Over the past four decades, public health officials have largely focused on changing behaviors — asking people to not drink and drive. But now, there are new auto technologies that can prevent them from doing so. […]
The Trailblazer Who Ensured Women With Breast Cancer Had a Choice
Today, it is not uncommon when a woman diagnosed with breast cancer writes about her experiences. Illness memoirs, hardly only about breast cancer, are now a popular genre. However, this was not always the case. When New York City-based writer Babette Rosmond published her book The Invisible Worm 50 years ago, it was a daring act of […]
“Brian’s Song” at 50 Still Offers Lessons About Cancer for Today
When “Brian’s Song” made its debut as an ABC Movie of the Week in 1971, this tear-jerker about a professional football player who died of cancer became a surprisingly popular hit. Fifty years later, it has sunk into obscurity, along with “Brian Piccolo: A Short Season,” a book written by Jeannie Morris, a journalist and […]
Another Pragmatic Public Health Decision
There has been much criticism of the decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to let Covid-infected people who are feeling better to stop quarantining after five days and simply wear a mask. Most of the concern stems from the fact that up to 31% of people in this category will actually still […]
Michael J. Fox: The Impact of a Very Famous Patient
When some people learn that I wrote a scholarly book on celebrity illness, they are skeptical. After all, celebrities are associated with a certain superficiality and self-promotion. How much can we really learn about famous people who go public with as serious a topic as disease? Quite a lot, it turns out. From Lou Gehrig […]
Resisting Public Health Measures, Then and Now
We owe the “rounders” an apology. Rounders were tuberculosis patients in the early 20th century who left hospitals against medical advice when they felt better and later wound up at another hospital. While “making the rounds,” they potentially infected others with their disease. Health officials routinely criticized these individuals for endangering the public. One of […]
Fox, Bosk, and Rothman: An Appreciation of Three Scholars of Medicine
With all of the tumult surrounding the coronavirus and the upcoming presidential election, few people likely noticed that three important figures in bioethics, medical history, and medical sociology recently died within a month of one another. But for those of us who work in these fields, the deaths of Renée Fox, Charles Bosk, and David […]
Weighing Risks for My Patients at a Time of Covid-19
My patients continue to have medical problems that are not related to the coronavirus. But now, when I offer recommendations — especially those that possibly involve putting themselves at risk of contracting a Covid-19 infection — they often reject my advice. Of course, my patients have a point. Not only has the coronavirus killed hundreds […]