Book and media reviews from the journal Science, edited by Valerie Thompson.

Valerie Thompson, Editor

Posts tagged with "Human Health"

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  Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again
  Eric Topol

  Book Human Health, Medicine

  Deep learning could give doctors of the future more time for the human aspects of health care

  26 March, 2019

  In 1970 in The New England Journal of Medicine, William Schwartz predicted that by the year 2000, much of the intellectual function of medicine could be either taken over or at least substantially augmented by “expert systems”—a branch of artificial intelligence (AI). Schwartz hoped that the medical school curriculum would be “redirected toward the social… Read More
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  The Beautiful Cure: The Revolution in Immunology and What It Means for Your Health
  Daniel M. Davis

  Book Human Health, Immunology

  The Beautiful Cure

  4 September, 2018

  In The Beautiful Cure, immunologist Daniel Davis endeavors to tell the story of human immunology in eight chapters, spanning foundational concepts, pivotal discoveries by brilliant scientists and their collaborators, the personal drama that has accompanied Nobel prizes and other recognition awarded in this highly competitive field, and anecdotes about how individual choices can affect one’s… Read More
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  Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna
  Edith Sheffer

  Book Autism, Human Health, Medical Ethics

  New research reveals that the physician behind Asperger’s syndrome was an active participant in Nazi eugenics

  11 June, 2018

  On 1 July 1941, a young Austrian physician named Hans Asperger signed a document transferring a toddler named Herta Schreiber to Spiegelgrund, an asylum for mentally ill children on the outskirts of Vienna. Two-year-old Herta had suffered diphtheria and meningitis, leaving her severely disabled. She “must present an unbearable burden to her mother,” Asperger, then… Read More
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  Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity
  Theodore M. Porter

  Book Genetics, Human Health

  Genetics in the Madhouse

  4 June, 2018

  Decades before Gregor Mendel studied pea plants or Thomas Hunt Morgan cultivated fruitflies, an isolated but vital international community gathered enormous bodies of data on hereditary traits. As Theodore Porter describes in his fascinating and original Genetics in the Madhouse, physicians and state officials tasked with overseeing insane asylums throughout the 19th century attempted to… Read More
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  Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations
  Anthony J. McMichael

  Book Climate change, Human Health

  An epidemiologist takes a long view of our fraught relationship with the environment

  23 January, 2017

  Last year’s adoption of the Paris Agreement signaled widespread political will to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury while aiming to keep the rise in global average temperatures to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels. More than 100 nations ratified it, and the mood was optimistic as countries reconvened this year to talk implementation. Read More