Showing 501 - 504 of 504 annotations tagged with the keyword "Medical Ethics"

Lab Coat: Robe of Innocence or Klansman's Sheet?

Bleier, Ruth

Last Updated: Aug-05-1994
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Criticism

Summary:

Bleier uses the image of a lab coat as a basis to discuss the objective status of science. Is the white lab coat a symbol of purity, of aseptic neutrality, in which the scientist is wrapped? Or does it give the scientist a faceless authority that cannot be challenged? Bleier believes that our conception of science must be changed. It is not enough to simply clear androcentric bias. Scientists must recognize the values and beliefs that inform their work, rather than assuming they work in an apolitical, asocial vacuum. Scientists should commit themselves to human values.

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Making Gender Visible in the Pursuit of Nature's Secrets

Keller, Evelyn

Last Updated: Aug-05-1994
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Criticism

Summary:

Keller studies the use of gendered metaphors in science and medicine. She argues that, contrary to popular belief, modern medicine does not usually see women as ineffable mysteries. Rather, female bodies are customarily understood as containing dangerous secrets that (masculine) science capably routs, thus suppressing the fount of female power. Modern science exposes feminine mystery; it does not bury it deeper. This "predominant mythology," argues Keller, "shapes the very meaning of science." Science is the lifting of Nature's veil (as pictured on the Nobel Prize), the invasion of female space.

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The Ship Who Sang

McCaffrey, Anne

Last Updated: May-20-1994
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

In the future envisioned in the novel, many children are born with severe physical handicaps, the result of toxic environmental conditions. Their brains, however, are perfectly healthy. Scientists place the infants' stunted bodies in mechanical shells, then train them to perform complex technical tasks. At adolescence, their brains are removed from their bodies and placed in machines. Their machines are their bodies, over which they have complete control. The Ship Who Sang is the story of one of these children who is placed inside the hull of a space ship. She falls in love with one of the fleshly men who board her. The resulting trauma is resolved when it is decided that they will be partnered forever.

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A Flat One

Snodgrass, W.

Last Updated: Feb-22-1994
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

Snodgrass writes about an old veteran who took seven months to die. The voice in the poem is that of a hospital attendant who provided some of the tedious, technical care that kept Old Fritz alive all that time. Though Old Fritz's "animal" may have "grown / sick of the world," his "mind ground on its separate / way, merciless and blind." He endured, he kept on living. Old Fritz raged against death, although he also "whimpered" and cried "like a whipped child . . . . "

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