Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: COVID-19 epidemic

  • Rapid testing for the masses

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Ten young girls are queueing outside the makeshift surgery. They are between eleven and fifteen, they wear face masks, they giggle and tease each other and try to encourage the timid ones before the coming ordeal. What is this going to be? Their first visit to a gynecologist? Nothing so memorable. They…

  • Gain of function

    Jayant RadhakrishnanDarien, Illinois, United States “It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.”– Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) “Gain of Function” (GoF) burst into the general lexicon in 2021 during two shouting matches in the US Senate between the Junior Senator from Kentucky and the Director of…

  • Review: The History of the World in 100 Pandemics, Plagues and Epidemics

    Arpan BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The publication of this book could not have been better timed. The book sets out to show how pandemics, epidemics, and infectious diseases have shaped human history over the last 5,000 years. Its contents help us place the current COVID-19 epidemic in its rightful historical context. Famine, war, and pestilence have…