online archive
3:00PM
NOV 19 2007
Post-chemotherapy fuzziness
AIDS denialism vs. science: AIDS denialists believe, with a faith unshakable by fact, that HIV does not cause AIDS and that antiretrovirals should not be used for HIV prevention or treatment — their misrepresentations and pseudoscientific views have cost lives in South Africa and elsewhere. A review of The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis (and more and more). Many cancer patients experience a kind of post-chemotherapy fuzziness that can be long-term and debilitating. Amid a severe kidney-donor shortage, an idea long considered anathema in the medical community is gaining new currency: payments for people willing to give up a kidney. Why do obese people choose a drastic solution for a relatively simple problem? Steven Levitt investigates. Time after time, properly conducted scientific studies have proved that homeopathic remedies work no better than simple placebos — so why do so many sensible people swear by them? Talking back to Prozac: Frederick C. Crews reviews The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder by Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield; Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness by Christopher Lane; and Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression by David Healy. The Sleep-Industrial Complex: While you’ve been tossing and turning, research scientists, pharmaceutical companies and mattress designers have been hard at work on your eternal nocturnal problem. But what exactly is the problem?
