The Doctor’s Book Club Siddhartha Mukherjee—The Gene All is now secure and fast; Not the gods can shake the Past; Flies-to the adamantine door Bolted down forevermore. Ralph Waldo Emerson The Past The US Food and Drug Administration recently recommended the approval of a gene altering treatment for leukemia, which could be the first gene […]
The Doctor’s Book Club Rebecca Skloot—The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks On 27 August 1963, Emanuel Mandel, the director of medicine at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital (JCDH), told his resident to inject cancer cells into unaware patients. This was not the first time that an experiment like this had taken place. Mandel’s work was […]
The Doctor’s Book Club Ben Winters Underground Airlines My country tis of thee, Late land of slavery, Of thee I sing. Land where my father’s pride Slept where my mother died, From every mountain side Let freedom ring! W E B Du Bois My Country ‘Tis of Thee Ben Winters’s Underground Airlines begins with a […]
The books shortlisted for this year’s Wellcome Book Prize are both challenging and engaging, according to author Val McDermid who chaired the award’s judging panel. Introducing the shortlist, McDermid said, “These books have affected us in ways we didn’t expect. Sometimes we found ourselves very emotionally involved, sometimes we found our curiosity stimulated to go […]
The Doctor’s Book Club Viet Thanh Nguyen The Sympathizer The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before -Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading In many fictional Anglican accounts of the Vietnam War, the chaos of […]
The Doctor’s Book Club Emma Donoghue’s Room And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. —Sylvia Plath “Lady Lazarus’ In 2008, a mysterious emergency room appearance of a young girl with kidney failure led to a gruesome discovery. As the Austrian investigators learned, […]
You don’t need to be a “Trekkie” to have noticed that 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. Events around the world have been organised to celebrate the enduring success of this popular TV and film series. We think that doctors should be particularly interested in Star Trek, not least because doctors have always featured […]
The Doctor’s Book Club Richard Flanagan The Narrow Road to the Deep North So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. -F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby It is estimated that almost 13,000 Allied prisoners died building the Burma Railway during the Second World War. Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow […]
The Doctor’s Book Club Lily King’s Euphoria The woman is perfected. Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment, The illusion of a Greek necessity Flows in the scrolls of her toga — Sylvia Plath “Edge” Set in the 1930s, Lily King’s Euphoria tells the story of the river tribes of New Guinea and the […]
The Doctors’ Book Club Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See Rich men, trust not in wealth, Gold cannot buy you health; Physic himself must fade. All things to end are made –Thomas Nashe “A Litany in Time of Plague” Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See recounts the story of two children […]