Botsa Katara// Prostheses have been known to humanity since antiquity, with the earliest traces of them to be found in ancient Rome and Egypt. But despite being here for centuries their evolution has been a slow and steady one. The change from simple wooden limbs to aesthetically and technologically more enhanced versions was the result…
Category: Science, Technology and Medicine
Who’s the Goopiest of them all? Pseudo-science and vulnerability in ‘The Goop Lab’
Emily Wheater // Wellness sells us our own optimised self. ‘Optimisation of self’ is the opening mission statement coming from Gwyneth Paltrow at the start of each episode of ‘The Goop Lab.’ The promise of The Goop Lab, which Netflix describes as a documentary series, is that it will show us how to get there….
Selling Sex: Erectile Dysfunction Treatments, Consumption, and Culture
John A. Carranza // In January 2020, Governor Gary Herbert of Utah suspended an HIV prevention campaign that used state-related sexual innuendo on condom packages to promote safer sex. For example, “Don’t Go Bare” was written over a bear’s backside. The issue, at least for Governor Herbert, was the use of taxpayer money that utilized…
Towards an Integral Model of Health: Documenting the Sterilization of Puerto Rican Women
Salvador Herrera // The camera slowly pans up a dry and cracked dirt road before settling on a set of large stone pillars. Each bears the outlines of the Taíno goddess of fertility and water, Atabey. The scene quickly cuts to a woman in labor, with jíbaro-style music playing in the background all the while….
Technology, Paranoia, and the Therapeutic Encounter
“This isn’t therapy, what we’ve done. We’ve erased things.” — Heidi Bergman, Homecoming (TV version). Roanne Kantor and Anna Mukamal // This fall I had the pleasure of teaching a course on intersections between disability and technology. In putting together the syllabus, I quickly noticed that one of the most potent sites for this question…
The Crisis of Waiting in North Macedonia
The public health consequences of North Macedonia’s political crisis would be considerable.
Epigenetics: The Promise of Control?
Emily Wheater // In my last piece for Synapsis, I wrote about how pregnant women have been the objects of scientific scrutiny, particularly with regards to any behaviours or feelings that may influence the health of their offspring. The pregnant woman is considered plastic, an accessible target for intervention. This discussion is embedded within opposing…
Zombie Epic: Medicalized Politics on Screen
Erik Larsen // Of all the monsters populating modern culture, zombies have lurched into a dominant position in our television and film. Despite varied examples across media forms, one trait unites these mindless eaters: zombies are distinctly unhealthy. Whether decaying bodies or the hosts for a decimating plague, zombies incarnate our sense of health’s absence,…
What about the men? The paternity data gap in DOHaD research
Emily Wheater // The ‘Developmental Origins of Health and Disease’ (DOHaD) hypothesis posits that environmental exposures that occur during critical periods of development have long-lasting and/or penetrative effects on offspring health by acting on developmental processes. Even if you have not heard ‘DOHaD’ before, you are likely to already be familiar with the concept and…
Divergent Perspectives on Psychedelic Medicalization
Neşe Devenot // As psychedelic medicine goes mainstream, contentious debates about psychedelic access have been spilling out into the open. With a historic ballot initiative decriminalizing “magic mushrooms” in Denver and statewide initiatives to change the legal status of mushrooms underway in Oregon and California, competing movements are jockeying to decide the future place of…
