Pathologising the Norm: The spread of mental illness
One in four of us will struggle with a mental illness this year, the most common being depression and anxiety. The upcoming publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for...
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Death by tonsillitis: Imagining a world without antibiotics
Many of us can safely say that without antibiotic treatment, we or a loved one would not be alive today. Yet because of their effectiveness, low cost and relatively wide availability, these miracle...
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How Academia and Publishing are Destroying Scientific Innovation: A...
The LMB Governing Board, October 1967. Left to right: Hugh Huxley, John Kendrew, Max Perutz, Francis Crick, Fred Sanger, Sydney Brenner. (From the website of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology)...
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Why Can’t We Love Like an Albatross?
Few animal displays are as alien, yet as touching, as a reunion of two Laysan albatross mates. Having scoured the oceans alone for months and thousands of miles, Laysan albatrosses return to the same...
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Against the Idea of ‘The Cure’
200-year-old anatomical wax model, La Specola, Florence. Credit: Konrad Laker. Ideas of health, its pathogenesis, and disease have radically evolved throughout the history of medicine right up to the...
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Co-operation
I wrote this piece nearly 30 years ago and delivered it as a secular address in King’s College Chapel. I unearthed it and brought it up to date because the issues are as relevant today as they were...
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On Not Going Gentle
You Are Old, Father William (with apologies to Lewis Carroll) “You are old, Father William,” the young man said, “And the money’s become very tight; And yet you’ll spend anything not to be dead – Do...
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Fishing for Fairness
The problem of resource depletion has been one of the most salient dilemmas of our century. Although environmental stewards encounter this threat, the distribution of knowledge and work practices among...
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