Weekend reading
The Smart Set: How to live forever
Jason Wilson travels to a remote part of Sardinia to find out why the area has so many centenarians. Along the way he finds sniping researchers, ambivalent old people and more questions than answers:
So if I'm the kind of person who's keen to increase my longevity -- and who isn't? -- it seems I have two options:
a) Struggle to eat 30 percent fewer calories than "normal."
b) Eat whatever I want, but find the time (and the capacity) to ingest the equivalent of 100 glasses of red wine every day.
Apparently, the science of longevity has become a little like that drinking game where you answer such uncomfortable questions as: Death by fire, or drowning? Would you rather pee in your pants every time someone calls your name, or develop the worst case of acne ever recorded?
Still, the "Would You Rather?" question of ascetic-versus-hedonist is fun to play. While we're playing, let me ask another question: Would you rather live a decidedly shorter life in a world of 24/7 stress, but still be able eat foie gras, candy bars, and Big Macs whenever you wanted to? Or would you rather, say, live forever as a poor, illiterate sheepherder in an isolated mountain village where resources are scarce?
(via)
NYT: Test prep or perp?
The NYT Mag's ethicist, Randy Cohen, decides that sharing cosmetically prescribed focus-enhancing drugs with your classmates is ethically A-OK.
-Greg Dahlmann
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Is it Ethical for a Doctor to Reveal Personal Information to Patients?
If you ask me, my answer to the question above is “sometimes.”
Doctors revealing personal anxieties, traumas, and experiences to patients are by no means rare. An oncologist giving a cancer patient strength through sharing his own struggles with cancer can sometimes be just what is needed. But sometimes giving patient hope and through telling personal stories are frowned upon. When it comes to psychiatry, doctors are expected to keep their therapy sessions “patient oriented,” as to avoid making the patient pay to hear about the doctor’s problems. Other reasons for this practice include: not having the patient trying to measure up to the doctor, not giving the patient a feeling of distrust (perhaps the doctor contracted an infectious disease), and not giving the patient false hopes with inappropriate treatment timelines. Thus, depending on the medical profession sharing personal stories should only be done in context.
- by Daniel Bai on Oct 12, 2007 at 9:02 PM | link