Healthcare History

Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery

The topic of brain surgery impresses the general public, but specific knowledge about the brain remains weak among the same public. That shortcoming will likely change in coming decades as twenty-first-century science penetrates neuroscience as a frontier, much as physics was explained in the twentieth century. In this book, neurosurgeon Theodore Schwartz explains the past, present, and future of brain surgery in this well-written history of the medical specialty. Henry Cushing stands as the father…

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Healthcare History Science

Medal Winners: How the Vietnam War Launched Nobel Careers

Doctors graduating medical school during the Vietnam War had several options. Most went to serve medically in the war theater. A few went into other smaller niches like the Public Health Service. A select few were drafted into a program to train in research at the NIH; these were subsequently known as “yellow berets” – an epithet turned point-of-pride among its recipients. Over the years, those who trained in this Clinical Associates program ended up…

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Healthcare Religion-Philosophy

Beholden: Religion, Global Health & Human Rights

Interactions between culture and religion are fraught with difficulties. Some want to do away with religion altogether. Others welcome religious influences on policy and practice. One thing’s for sure, though: There are always points of both friction and synergy between the two groups. Susan Holman, a scholar in the Christian tradition, examines these interactions in six distinct articles. In so doing, she examines the roots and nature of human rights and the religious value of…

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Biography-Memoir Healthcare Science

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

What is it like to go through a stroke? Additionally, what’s it like to observe your own stroke if you’re an elite brain scientist? Those two storylines are what Jill Bolte Taylor offers in this short memoir. For those not yet exposed to the internals of how the brain works, it offers an accessible tutorial. Many readers are not accustomed to understanding how different regions of the brain function together to provide a coherent experience…

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Healthcare Religion-Philosophy Society

Religion, Spirituality & Public Health: Competing & Complementary Epistemes

In the COVID-19 pandemic, resistance to modern biomedicine (evidence-based medicine) occurred in droves and presented real problems to public health implementers trying to get us out of infections. Now that the pandemic is over, it’s worth spending time reflecting on how to better handle similar approaches in the future. This volume, from the British Academy, offers such an approach. Its vision is global in scope, not just localized to the British isles. So what’s an…

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Healthcare Research-Education Science

Practical Implementation Science: Moving Evidence into Action

With the Internet, the world has become glut with information, and the domain of scientific knowledge is no exception. The challenge, however, has become implementing that knowledge into healthcare practice. Papers are published, read a few times, cited by other authors, and often die in scientific journals. Those journals are great, but the pipeline to practice (the clinic and patient lives) needs to open up more. Translational science and implementation science aim to do just…

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Artificial Intelligence Healthcare

A Giant Leap: How AI is Transforming Healthcare & What That Means for Our Future

There is no doubt that generative AI is a disruptive technology that will continue to have impacts in the coming years if not decades. Representing one-fifth of the American economy, healthcare is one area where AI has perhaps the most promise to do good. Since much of healthcare runs on textual material, generative AI’s ability to process material and respond appropriately brings a huge “wow” factor. UCSF clinician and informaticist Robert Wachter brings those ideas…

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Healthcare History Religion-Philosophy

Medicine & Health Care in Early Christianity

Historian Gary Ferngren seeks to usurp overly simplistic historical interpretations of Christian attitudes towards healthcare. Many, like the famous church historian Adolf von Harnack, say that the first few centuries of the church were dominated by a healing faith that did not trust physicians. Others posit the early church as having a very antagonistic view to the medicine of the day because they viewed it as pagan. Through copious citations to the primary literature, he…

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Healthcare Religion-Philosophy Society

Religion & the Health of the Public: Shifting the Paradigm

Religion and science are often portrayed as antagonistic fields. Most religious leaders do not pursue a science-heavy education, and most prominent scientists see too many ways that religion inhibits scientific exploration and healthcare. Public health and religion, however, have similar goals; they both seek to promote healthy living among their devotees. Why the fighting then? Generally, there exists walls of mutual ignorance and even stigma about the other side. The authors seek to address this…

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Healthcare Management-Business Software-Technology

Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech

Today, biotech companies are synonymous with high-risk, high-reward research that advances the healthcare and wallets of countries with advanced economies. However, fifty years ago, this type of company did not exist. There were university research labs, and there were big corporations. No startup companies sought to translate the small experiments into lucrative business ventures. Out of Silicon Valley, California, Genentech was one of the first to do so. They translated work in recombinant DNA technology…

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