My Virtual Reading Room

Three articles from the NYT:

People Say, ‘Be Positive’ When You Have Cancer. I Prefer to Complain With Friends.

Cancer Took Away My Ability to Eat, but Not My Love of Food

I Have M.S. This Is What It’s Like to Be Fed by Other People.

Technology and Research:

Doctors Transplant Ear of Human Cells, Made by 3-D Printer, also from the NYT

Liver Preserved for 3 Days With Machine Perfusion Successfully Transplanted
--Patient healthy and leading normal life at 1 year, from MedPage Today

Other tidbits:

My “Private” War against the Tobacco Industry, by Stephen Barrett, M.D.

(or, what can happen over time if enough people cause enough of a ruckus)

Sophie Freud, professor who challenged her grandfather’s doctrine, dies at 97

"...“I’m very skeptical about much of psychoanalysis,” she told the Boston Globe in 2002. “I think it’s such a narcissistic indulgence that I cannot believe in it.”

She dismissed “penis envy,” a developmental stage that Sigmund Freud attributed to young girls, as “nonsense” and the ideas of a “3-year-old boy.”

Of her grandfather’s theory of the parent-child dynamic, she dryly remarked, “I have some questions about this Oedipal relationship.”

She found particularly flawed her grandfather’s understanding of female patients. “My grandfather was a good and loving man,” Dr. Freud told the Associated Press, “but he understood nothing about a woman’s sexuality.”..."

Is Putin Sick – Or Are We Meant to Think He Is?, from the New Lines Magazine

"...Steroids – a common one is prednisone – attack malignant lymphocytes that circulate in the blood, but they are also known for two common side effects.

The first is a high risk of infection owing to how badly they deplete immune cells. “Anyone on heavy doses of steroids will find it much easier to contract COVID-19,” Grossman said, which might account for Putin’s extreme germophobia and recourse to Howard Hughes-like seclusion. Pneumonia, too, can easily kill an immunocompromised steroid user.

And the second side effect?

“Deeply irrational or paranoid behavior.”