Bruce Springsteen: The Latest Celebrity DWI
It was especially disappointing to read about Bruce Springsteen’s recent arrest for suspicion of driving while intoxicated (DWI). After all, the famous rocker, whose father was an alcoholic, has stated that he is not a heavy drinker. And his father’s sister was killed by a truck when she was a child. Yet Springsteen, according to the arresting […]
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 […]
Now is the time to trust public health experts like Anthony Fauci
The news that staying at home and other forms of social distancing may be flattening the curve of the deadly covid-19 outbreak has led to growing calls to rescind these public health edicts. For example, the top-ranking Republican in the Minnesota state legislature has announced his opposition to Gov. Tim Walz’s (D) order that citizens continue to […]
What Alex Trebek has taught us about celebrity illness
When Alex Trebek recently went on national television and described the excruciating belly pain he had experienced due to chemotherapy for Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, it was a moment unlike any other in the history of celebrity illnesses. Trebek rated the pain, which he experienced during the taping of “Jeopardy,” an 11 out of 10 […]
‘Three Identical Strangers’: The high cost of experimentation without ethics
On Sunday night, CNN will air “Three Identical Strangers,” a documentary about an experiment in which adopted twins and triplets were secretly separated. Viewers will probably be appalled as they learn about the emotional damage these individuals experienced as a result of their forced separation. But this medical experiment was not exceptional: It was just […]
How Americans Learned to Condemn Drunk Driving
At a traffic safety conference in 1980, a Californian named Candy Lightner delivered her first public speech about a 13-year-old freckle-faced girl who had recently been killed by a drunk driver with several previous convictions. At the conclusion of her talk, she announced, “That girl was my daughter.” As Lightner later wrote, the press ran […]
Fat Nation Changed How I Talk to My Patients About Obesity
A couple of years ago, I wrote a purposely provocative post for the New York Times’ Well blog arguing that it was reasonable for physicians to discuss serious health issues with their patients without first asking permission to do so. Unfortunately, the editors titled the piece, “Can We Talk About Your Weight?” which perhaps implied […]