Medicine
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On the dangers of reading.
When my kid reads stuff she can’t quite understand, she only hurts herself. Others cause more harm. Please, vaccinate your child.
45, altering children’s literature, anxiety, books, breast milk, breastfeeding, Calvin and Hobbes, censoring children’s books, censoring children’s literature, censorship, children in human evolution, comics, conspiracy theory, cultivating a child’s reading habits, curating a child’s reading habits, death of a child, disease, disease burden, do vaccines cause autism, do vaccines work, do you like my hat, Donald Trump, Eula Biss, evolution, fatherhood, flu, flu vaccine, Fox Is Famous, Fox on the Job, gender stereotypes, get your child vaccinated, Go Dog Go, growth mindset, H1N1, herd immunity, human evolution, independent reading, James Marshall, kids’ books, learning to read too early, measles, milk, Mutts, Olivia Dahl, On Immunity, open communication, parental censorship, parenting, Patrick McDonnell, preventable death, preventable illness, raising children, Raquel D’Apice, reading, reading too early, research journals, Roald Dahl, science, science deniers, scientific discourse, scientific literacy, scientists, stereotypes, teaching children to read, too young for independent reading, undervaccination, unvaccinated children, vaccination, vaccine efficacy, vaccines, vaccines don’t cause autism, when a child starts reading
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On radical religious terrorists targeting the United States.
Radical Christian terrorists have wrecked egregious violence throughout the United States, but few politicians speak out against them.
abortion, Abraham, Alta Vista Hospital, Aryan, attacking doctors, attempted murder, Bible, born into hostage situation, Camus, Christian apologist, Christian Identity, Christian terrorism, conception, Curtis, Danny Davis, Deliver Them from Evil, faith, Fear and Trembling, fetus, Gods of the Blood, gun violence, gynecology, homocide, hostage, hostage situation, intimidation, Israel, jail, Job, Kierkegaard, King James, knight of infinite resignation, leap of faith, Matthias Gardell, McDonalds, Michael Griffin, miscarriage, miscegenation, Mix My Blood with the Blood of the Unborn, Paul Hill, Phineas, Phineas actions, reproductive health, reproductive rights, Richard Kelly Hoskins, self-aborting zygotes, Shelly Shannon, shootings, suicide, terrorism, terrorist, The Pagan Revival and White Separatism, The Phinehas Priesthood, tubal ligation, Utah, violence against doctors, violent vanguard of the Christian Identity movement, when does human life begin, white supremacy, women’s reproductive health, women’s right to choose, zygote
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On Sci-Hub, the Napster of science.
Can people really be “informed consumers” of modern healthcare when they can’t read the research their taxes pay for?
academic journals, Alexandra Elbakyan, autism, bad medical advice, biomedical research, concussion, folate, ghostwriting, health, healthcare, medicine, Napster, p-value, pop medicine, repair manual, replication crisis, research journals, Sci-Hub, science, scientific papers, scihub, statistical testing, superfoods, TBI, theft, traumatic brain injury
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On psychotropic drugs and optimism.
An optimist can’t help but see the world as it could be.
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On scrutiny.
Nobody’s perfect — if you look hard enough, you will always find flaws. The trick is knowing not to diagnose those flaws as “disease” or signs of criminality.
age-related disease, attention, cancer, cell division, Craig Venter, DNA, DNA replication, greed, greedy doctors, Health Nucleus, image analysis, information inequality, John Steinbeck, olfaction, physical exam, physicals, polymerase, pre-cancer, pre-criminals, prejudice, preschool suspension, school to prison pipeline, sensory overload, The Pearl, tumor
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On naked mole-rats.
Naked mole-rats shrug off pain, & cancer, & even time itself… but can they withstand the curiosity of Homo sapiens?
age-related diseases, age-related mortality, aging, animal cognition, animal research, animal welfare, anoxia, anoxia resistance, apoxia resistance, breeding, caloric restriction, cancer, cancer immunity, cancer resistance, cancer susceptibility, carbon dioxide poisoning, chemotherapy, Christopher Byrd, civil war, compassion, cooperation, cooperative childcare, Creep, cruelty, David Stipp, death curve, Eliot Weinberger, environmentalism, eusocial, eusocial mammals, eusociality, evolution, evolution of eusociality, food insecurity, fructose, Fructose-driven glycolysis, glucose, good stewardship, high-molecular-mass hyaluronan, hit single, hyaluronan, hypoxia, immortality, jail poetry, Jennifer Jarvis, Karmic Traces, lab mice, Laboratory Animal Welfare Act, laboratory animals, laboratory research, lifespan, lifespan elongation, limited senescence, longevity, mating habits, metabolism, mutation, Naked Mole-Rats, naked molerats, New Yorker, Norman Dubie, observation, opiates, Orange and Peanuts for Sale, Oranges and Peanuts for Sale, oxidation, oxidative stress, oxygen deprivation, pain, painkillers, Park et al., poetry, prison poetry, Radiohead, recycling, research animals, Richard Alexander, Selective Inflammatory Pain Insensitivity, Stalin, starvation, stroke, The Biology of Naked Mole-Rats, The Ghosts of Birds, The Marshall Cloud, Thomas Park, Tian et al., tumor, tumor resistance, tumorogenesis, What Happened Here, Xiao Tian
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On psychedelic drugs as medicine.
Would a sudden jolt away from our minds’ ruts help treat depression? Or — complacency in general?
acid, acid trip, addict, addiction, autism, ayahuasca, CBT, CIA, clinical trials, cognitive behavioral therapy, David Foster Wallace, depressed, depression, DMT, drugs, ecstasy, entheogen, experiments on children, experiments on orphans, habit, In Search of Lost Time, Infinite Jest, Intoxication, involuntary experimentation, junkie, Lauretta Bender, learning, lost love, LSD, lysergic acid, Marcel Proust, MDMA, mescaline, MK Ultra, molly, mushrooms, neurology, organic synthesis, orphans, peyote, placebo, placebo effect, psilocin, psilocybin, psychedelic, Remembrance of Things Past, Ronald Siegel, Schedule I, shrooms, suicide, virtuous cycle, William Burroughs, you must change your life
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On Don Delillo’s ‘Zero K’ and the dream of eternal life.
Would it be easier to use artificial intelligence to resurrect the more self-absorbed and robotic among us?
aging, artificial intelligence, biology of aging, caloric restriction, cellular biology, don delillo, freeze my brain, heat death of the universe, immortality, lifespan, limited senescence, lobsters, mechanical mind, meditation, memory, Mr. Darcy is a weird dude, neurology, pride and prejudice, psychology studies, simulating a human brain, social psychology, synaptic connectome, telomere elongation, the inevitability of death, Turing test, White Noise, why do we die?, zero k
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On AIDS and drought in Malawi.
It’s hard to save the forests for some nebulous future when you might die of AIDS (or even rabies!) within the year.
a history of violence, AIDS, charcoal, climate change, deforestation, drought, health care, health insurance, HIV, HIV epidemic, illegal charcoal production, inequality, infectious disease, Malawi, medical care, Peace Corps, poverty, rabies, rabies vaccine, reparations, the historical roots of inequality, wealth begets wealth, zero-parent households
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On deer, wolves, and Sean Carroll’s ‘The Serengeti Rules.’
Monoculture — whether it’s a body churning out cancer cells, an environment churning out deer, or a world churning out Starbucks — is an illness.
apex predators, Beyond Words, Bloomington, Carl Safina, climate change, college kids need more fear, deer, ecological diversity, elk, environmentalism, gardening, gas tax, Hope Jahren, keystone species, Lab Girl, overbreeding, overpopulation, planting trees, population regulation, predation, Robert Paine, Sean Carroll, starfish, starvation, The Serengeti Rules, we need wilderness, wolves, Yellowstone
Frank Brown Cloud 