Tag: biology

Sat
Oct 11th
2014
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Cancer: Body & Mind

Throughout history, no other disease entity has exceeded cancer in its evocation of fear, taboo, misconceptions, and metaphors.

In her 1978 book, Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag threw down the gauntlet in her denunciation of metaphor applied to illness, as leading to a false connection between psychological traits and disease, scorning the contemporaneous, popular notion of a “cancer personality,” that “[p]assion moves inward, striking and blighting the deepest cellular recesses.”… read more »

Sat
Apr 26th
2014
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Women and Science

An ancient Egyptian hieroglyph at Saqqara declared Merit-Ptah as “the Chief Physician.” 4700 years after her achievement, we ask: How are women in science faring?

It is a well-documented phenomenon that for all STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects, the gender gap widens in the progression from undergraduate study, through graduate and post-doctoral work, up through academic appointment.… read more »