An analysis of how findings in behavioral economics challenge fundamental assumptions of medical ethics, integrating the latest research in both fields. Bioethicists have long argued for rational persuasion to help patients with medical decisions. But the findings of behavioral economics—popularized in Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge and other books—show that arguments depending on rational …
Cannabis consumption, commerce, and control in global history, from the nineteenth century to the present day. This book gathers together authors from the new wave of cannabis histories that has emerged in recent decades. It offers case studies from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. It does so to trace a global history of the plant and its preparations, arguing that We…
An examination of the daily grind of living with pollution in rural China and of the varying forms of activism that develop in response. Residents of rapidly industrializing rural areas in China live with pollution every day. Villagers drink obviously tainted water and breathe visibly dirty air, afflicted by a variety of ailments—from arthritis to nosebleeds—that they ascribe to the effe…
Leading scientists argue for a new paradigm for cancer research, proposing a complex systems view of cancer supported by empirical evidence. Current consensus in cancer research explains cancer as a disease caused by specific mutations in certain genes. Thanks to dramatic advances in genome sequencing, never before have we known so much about the individual cancer cell—and yet it is still …
The World Health Organization's post–World War II work on the epidemiology and classification of mental disorders and its vision of a “world psyche.” In 1948, the World Health Organization began to prepare its social psychiatry project, which aimed to discover the epidemiology and arrive at a classification of mental disorders. In Mad by the Millions, Harry Y-Jui Wu examines the WHO's …
Why the microbiome—our rich inner ecosystem of microorganisms—may hold the keys to human health. We are at the dawn of a new scientific revolution. Our understanding of how to treat and prevent diseases has been transformed by knowledge of the microbiome—the rich ecosystem of microorganisms in and on every human. These microbial hitchhikers may hold the keys to human health. In Gut Fee…
The emergence of ketamine—previously known as a combat anesthetic and club drug—as a treatment for depression. Ketamine, approved in 2019 by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of depression, has been touted by scientists and media reports as something approaching a miracle cure. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series chronicles the ascent of a drug that h…
What does the birth of babies whose embryos have gone through genome editing mean—for science and for all of us? In November 2018, the world was shocked to learn that two babies had been born in China with DNA edited while they were embryos—as dramatic a development in genetics as the 1996 cloning of Dolly the sheep. In this book, Hank Greely, a leading authority on law and genetics, tel…
How viruses emerge to cause pandemics, how our immune system combats them, and how diagnostic tests, vaccines, and antiviral therapies work. Throughout history, humans have contended with pandemics. History is replete with references to plagues, pestilence, and contagion, but the devastation wrought by pandemics had been largely forgotten by the twenty-first century. Now, the enormous human …
A reconceptualization of origins research that exploits a modern understanding of non-covalent molecular forces that stabilize living prokaryotic cells. Scientific research into the origins of life remains exploratory and speculative. Science has no definitive answer to the biggest questions—“What is life?” and “How did life begin on earth?” In this book, Jan Spitzer reconceptualiz…