Project MUSE®: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine.daily12026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (1957) through current issue (with gaps in vols. 22, 23)Latest Articles: Perspectives in Biology and MedicineTWOProject MUSE®Perspectives in Biology and Medicine1529-87950031-5982Latest articles in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Alan N. Schechter (1939–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985809
<p></p>
It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Alan Neil Schechter, MD, a world-renowned figure in biomedical research and a cherished colleague, mentor, and friend. Alan had a long association with Perspectives in Biology and Medicine and served as Senior Editor from 2010 to 2014. He died on October 15, 2025, just after his 86th birthday, following a distinguished career spanning more than six decades at the National Institutes of Health.Arriving in 1965 to join the NIH's intramural program, Alan exemplified the physician-investigator ideal. His career arc traced the evolution of modern molecular medicine, from foundational studies in protein biochemistry to pioneering translational research in sickle
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152/image/coversmallAlan N. Schechter (1939–2025)2026-03-24text/htmlen-USAlan N. Schechter (1939–2025)2026-03-242026TWOProject MUSE®88232026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-24Guinea Pigs and Semplica Girls: On Degradation, Exploitation, and Clinical Research
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985810
<p></p>
In 1969, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAS) made the mistake of inviting the philosopher Hans Jonas to write an essay about human experimentation. His response wasn't exactly what most clinical researchers wanted to hear. In "Philosophical Reflections on Experimenting with Human Subjects," Jonas put his finger on just what makes clinical research morally disturbing, especially when it is done on healthy subjects. "What is wrong with making a person an experimental subject is not so much that we make him thereby a means," he wrote, "as that we make him a thing—a passive thing merely to be acted on" (235). Turning someone into a thing amounts to a special form of exploitation, an
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152/image/coversmallGuinea Pigs and Semplica Girls: On Degradation, Exploitation, and Clinical Research2026-03-24text/htmlen-USGuinea Pigs and Semplica Girls: On Degradation, Exploitation, and Clinical Research2026-03-242026TWOProject MUSE®539242026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-24The Bioethicist as Truth Teller: A Commentary on Carl Elliott
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985811
<p></p>
Carl Elliott opens his essay with an arrow shot into the Achilles heel of bioethics. Observing the practical effect of Hans Jonas's writing on the ethics of medical research using human subjects, Elliott writes:
Rarely has an essay so widely admired been so thoroughly ignored. While "Philosophical Reflections on Experimenting with Human Subjects" is often reprinted in bioethics textbooks and anthologies, nobody takes its recommendations seriously. For example, instead of becoming the collective humanitarian enterprise that Jonas envisioned, drug research has grown into a vast shadow economy in which subjects are paid for the use of their bodies as biological testing sites.
(2)
Widely admired but ignored—how many
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152/image/coversmallThe Bioethicist as Truth Teller: A Commentary on Carl Elliott2026-03-24text/htmlen-USThe Bioethicist as Truth Teller: A Commentary on Carl Elliott2026-03-242026TWOProject MUSE®131892026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-24Measuring Age: Chronology and Its Alternatives
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985812
<p></p>
Chronological age became a decisive political issue at one point in the 2024 US presidential elections. The two candidates' ages differed by less than 5% in that election year. Yet partisans of each candidate made quite different judgments about competency to serve on the basis of age, which led the oldest to drop out. Moreover, the 2024 contest is not the first time that chronological age has emerged as a contested characteristic in judging a presidential candidate (Blumenthal and Morone 2010; NPR Public Editor 2024). The striking divergence in judgments about age and presidential competency underlines the idea that chronology may not be an ideal measure of the concept "age."This article surveys different
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152/image/coversmallMeasuring Age: Chronology and Its Alternatives2026-03-24text/htmlen-USMeasuring Age: Chronology and Its Alternatives2026-03-242026TWOProject MUSE®1309492026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-24Magnanimity in Medicine: The Role of an Ancient Virtue in Health Care
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985813
<p></p>
The practice of medicine is replete with examples of routine domination. Hospital administrators have been known to extract profit from the labor of doctors to the point of dehumanization; doctors to have dismissed the concerns of nurses; attending physicians to have shamed medical students for a lack of knowledge; and patients to have been discharged prematurely, rushed through office visits, or prescribed unneeded treatments or tests because of perverse incentives. These webs of domination may be complex, as patients are dominated by physicians, who are in turn dominated by health-care administrators, who are in turn dominated by the market demands for profit maximization.Such examples are marked by power and
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152/image/coversmallMagnanimity in Medicine: The Role of an Ancient Virtue in Health Care2026-03-24text/htmlen-USMagnanimity in Medicine: The Role of an Ancient Virtue in Health Care2026-03-242026TWOProject MUSE®769872026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-24Courage, Conviction, Resolve: The Story of Dr. Gui Xi'en
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985814
<p></p>
In April 2025, I traveled to China, returning to the hospital where my husband, Dr. Myron [Mike] Cohen, and I lived and worked in 1979–1980, to visit our long-time colleague, Dr. Gui Xi'en. Now 88 and retired, Dr. Gui lives with his wife in an apartment on the grounds of Zhongnan Hospital in Wuhan, where he has spent much of his adult life.Walking to the hospital along East Lake, I was transported to our life there 45 years ago. Much had changed, of course, as modernization has greatly affected health care and almost every other aspect of life in China. However, Dr. Gui still lives on the 5th floor of an old apartment building with no elevator, and as I puffed my way up the bare concrete stairwell, I passed the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152/image/coversmallCourage, Conviction, Resolve: The Story of Dr. Gui Xi'en2026-03-24text/htmlen-USCourage, Conviction, Resolve: The Story of Dr. Gui Xi'en2026-03-242026TWOProject MUSE®732762026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-24Making Fun of Medicine: Resisting Medicine's Principalities
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985815
<p></p>
As a young man of the Oglala Sioux, Nicholas Black Elk was called upon to heal the sick. In telling his life story, Black Elk insists his power to heal was intrinsically connected to his role as a Heyókȟa (Heyokxa or, simply, Heyoka)—a sacred clown (Neihardt 2014). While Black Elk's role is contested by both the Oglala Sioux community and historians of Indigenous study and practice, his memory of the Heyoka ceremony provokes the medical imagination. Black Elk performed this ceremony in front of his community, "where most people were at the time." The ceremony entailed clowning and comedy, inviting laughter at Black's Elk's antics and tricks. Only after such comedy could the Heyoka both present "the great truth" and
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152/image/coversmallMaking Fun of Medicine: Resisting Medicine's Principalities2026-03-24text/htmlen-USMaking Fun of Medicine: Resisting Medicine's Principalities2026-03-242026TWOProject MUSE®721892026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-24Existential Competence: Redefining Clinical Excellence Beyond Health Optimization
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985816
<p></p>
The pudding is still warm from the oven. Dulce, who has diabetes, chooses to take a second helping, savoring how the recipe connects her to her grandmother (Timothy 2015). A glucose meter cannot measure this intergenerational tie, so tomorrow her doctor will see only the numbers showing poor blood sugar control. This narrow vision illustrates the difficulty medicine often faces in integrating cultural and existential dimensions of human experience in acts deemed "unhealthy." Dulce's story illustrates a recurring tension between biomedical priorities and lived meaning.Many clinicians—especially those providing primary or ongoing care—nevertheless strive to understand and respect patients' cultural perspectives and
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152/image/coversmallExistential Competence: Redefining Clinical Excellence Beyond Health Optimization2026-03-24text/htmlen-USExistential Competence: Redefining Clinical Excellence Beyond Health Optimization2026-03-242026TWOProject MUSE®995572026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-24The Final Act of Care: Accuracy in Cause of Death Statements
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985817
<p></p>
Death certificates act as verified records that conclude the administrative aspects of a person's life. They allow families and loved ones to begin the legal process of testate, thereby facilitating the allocation of property, collection of insurance, and completion of arrangements for the care of the body. In the United States, the death certificate includes essential biographical information about the decedent, including the manner and cause of death. For some, an accurate record of the cause of death may appear to be little more than a procedural step necessary to obtain a death certificate, and where there is not an ensuing forensic investigation, the cause of death may even seem immaterial—the heart has
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152/image/coversmallThe Final Act of Care: Accuracy in Cause of Death Statements2026-03-24text/htmlen-USThe Final Act of Care: Accuracy in Cause of Death Statements2026-03-242026TWOProject MUSE®1006872026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-24The Mental Health Crisis of Rural America: Understanding Supply and Demand
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985818
<p></p>
In the summer of 2023, a year before I started medical school, I agreed to help my dad move his private psychiatric clinic in the rural Michigan town of Owosso from one building to another. I had just turned 21 years old, and I had a surface-level understanding of rural psychiatry and its challenges. But as we packed up his office, filling boxes with patient files and trucks with furniture, I listened intently to my dad's stories of isolation, overwhelming patient demand, and the constant battle to keep his practice afloat. I felt that, as his own son, I had stayed comfortably ignorant for too long. I can only imagine how much less the rest of America knows about the reality of providing mental health care to its
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152/image/coversmallThe Mental Health Crisis of Rural America: Understanding Supply and Demand2026-03-24text/htmlen-USThe Mental Health Crisis of Rural America: Understanding Supply and Demand2026-03-242026TWOProject MUSE®885072026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-24"Wouldn't It Be Easier to Be Burned at the Stake?": Schizophrenia and Deinstitutionalization in Bitter Medicine
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819
<p></p>
In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1979), Michel Foucault outlines a profound shift in the exercise of power through a subtle form of control. He argues that enclosed spaces like prisons, schools, military barracks, and hospitals act as institutions of disciplinary power, where individuals are carefully observed, normalized, and molded to conform to dominant standards. This framework extends to psychiatric institutions, which, under the semblance of care, enact disciplinary functions by classifying, labeling, and often silencing those who do not conform to the idea of normality in a society.The critique of psychiatric institutions and their hegemonic power finds a powerful expression in Miloš
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985819">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/152/image/coversmall"Wouldn't It Be Easier to Be Burned at the Stake?": Schizophrenia and Deinstitutionalization in Bitter Medicine2026-03-24text/htmlen-US"Wouldn't It Be Easier to Be Burned at the Stake?": Schizophrenia and Deinstitutionalization in Bitter Medicine2026-03-242026TWOProject MUSE®927632026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-24