Tag: public health
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Milk adulteration
Catherine TangPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Global milk consumption has steadily increased over the past few decades, reaching an estimated 908 billion liters in 2021.1 Rich in protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals, milk is considered an “ideal food” for its abundant nutrients required by both children and adults. However, milk is also one of the…
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Vespasian toilets
Titus Flavius Vespasianus became Roman emperor in AD 69 following the death of Nero and the brief reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. Remembered for his conquest of Judea and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by his son Titus, Vespasian set about to restore the damage and destruction the city and its empire had…
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Book review: Understanding the NHS
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom The National Health Service in the United Kingdom was founded in 1948 by Aneurin Bevan, a Welsh Labour Party politician and health minister in Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government. Bevan was a coal miner before entering Parliament in 1928. He had long campaigned for a free health service for all…
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Dr. Joycelyn Elders: An unwelcome prophet
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “No prophet is welcome in his hometown.”— The Gospel of Saint Luke, 4:24. New American Standard Bible Joycelyn Elders, MD (b. 1933) was Surgeon General of the United States of America from 1993 to 1994. She was the second woman and the first Black person to have that position. Her life story…
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The germ of laziness
Enrique Chaves-Carballo Overland Park, Kansas, United States Charles Wardell Stiles (1867-1941). Parasitologist, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Portrait ca. 1912. Wikimedia Commons Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation was chartered on June 1909 “to promote the well-being and to advance the civilization of the peoples of the United States and its territories and possessions and of…
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A wrong time to die
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Death is the one absolute and unexceptional certainty in life. In the Bible we read that there is a time for everything, including a time to die [Ecclesiastes 3:2]. Is there ever a “right” time to die? Faced with such a question, we often consider that anyone who has achieved their aims…
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Mortality data, risk probability, and the psychology of assent in the enlightenment smallpox debate
David SpadaforaPinehurst, North Carolina The present health crisis is hardly the first to provoke significant controversy about preventing and treating widespread disease. Debate over epidemic-related data, its reliability, and its uses has a long history. So does concern about the psychological elements involved in securing assent from physicians and an endangered population for the use…
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Milwaukee’s unlikely public health advocate
Lea DacyRochester, MN, United States The story of my mother’s possible childhood episode of pertussis (also known as whooping cough) has lived on in family lore because of its link with a notorious legendary figure in Milwaukee history. One Sunday afternoon, Helen Cromell (she later changed it to Cromwell), or “Dirty Helen” as she is…
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Occupational lung malignancies: Role of malachite
Tamas F. MolnarKatalin AknaiHungary To this very day, malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) remains a serious oncologic, public health, and industrial challenge, a fatal disease in which standard chemotherapy with or without radiotherapy has done little to increase the chance of survival.1-6 While the role of asbestos exposure in the pathogenesis of the disease is seemingly…
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Revisiting the “Trolley Problem” in the COVID-19 pandemic
Margaret B. MitchellBoston, Massachusetts, United StatesGraham M. Attipoe Nashville, Tennessee, United States The “Trolley Problem” Originally described by Philipa Foot in 1967, the “Trolley Problem” is an ethical dilemma commonly taught in philosophy that challenges participants to explore how far they would go to save lives: A trolley is barreling down a set of tracks towards…