Anyone who has been paying attention to the developing COVID-19 crisis in the United States will have noticed a puzzling and damaging paradox. While political leaders claim to be taking action against the pandemic based on the best scientific advice available, when this advice conflicts with what they perceive to be in their own best political interests, they reject it. Worse, they denounce the advice being given as bad science and the advisers as being bad scientists. The attacks seem to become additionally virulent when a scientific advisor changes his or her mind.
Continue reading Biting the Hand that Treats You. Unwarranted Assaults on Healthcare AdviceMonthly Archives: July 2020
The Whistle—Extraordinary Ordinary Things
Some of the most famous lines in cinema history were uttered by Lauren Bacall to Humphry Bogart in the 1944 Film “To Have and To Have Not.” The scene has Bogart’s character Harry “Steve” Morgan, a fishing captain in Nazi-occupied France refusing to smuggle members of the resistance on to his boat. Bacall, playing Marie “Slim” Browning, flirtatiously tries to change his mind. Just before exiting the scene, she passionately kisses him and says, “You don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you Steve? You just put your lips together, and blow.”
Continue reading The Whistle—Extraordinary Ordinary Things