Zackary Sholem Berger's Blog, page 6
April 30, 2018
February 28, 2018
Happy Purim!
If I can’t give you shalechmones (#Purim gift packages) in person, you can read the poems that I include. Happy holiday of violence, sex, liquor, poetry, magic, and defeated fascism!
א פריילעכן פורים! צי האט א טעם
גאר נישט קיין המן-טאשן
נאר א טרוקענער גראם?
זיי טועם און זע.
איך קען נאר שרייבן וואס איך פארשטיי.
February 5, 2018
Clinical care and complicity with torture: our piece in the BMJ
Matthew DeCamp, Leonard Rubenstein and I published a piece in the British Medical Journal about how normal clinical care was perverted in the torture milieu by the CIA and its physicians. Very topical given the latest State of the Union, and Trump’s love for Guantanamo.
January 10, 2018
Ask Dr. Berger: Feeling Sick While Exercising; “Quality of Life”
Dear Dr. Berger,
How can doctors and patients understand what is meant by “quality of life”?
Amy Allara, Maryland
Dear Ms. Allara,
It depends on the context, of course. The term “quality of life” is naturally unclear, so one has to ask some serious questions even to find out what is being referred to.
Read more in Medium.
Changing The US Health Care System: Reform, Revolution, or Rebellion
Given that many attempts to improve the US health care system have failed, what should be done next, and how can real change be achieved?
Read my piece on Medium.
January 4, 2018
The Halacha of Despair in the Age of Trump
We have lost so much in the past year. Some losses are obvious and concrete (voting without foreign interference; the freedom to pursue rigorous journalism; access to reproductive health; leaders who eschew corruption). Others, no less important, are more abstract, beliefs and hopes whose promise our country has never achieved: that any human deserves respect no matter what group she belongs to; that pluralism makes us stronger. But there’s much that is less tangible whose loss we haven’t realized. What if there are so many missing pieces to our imagined America that we are left with a vague sense of unrightness rather than a clear mark of absence?
New on Medium, my thoughts about the concept of yeush (despair) in Jewish law, and how it can help us figure out what to do with the losses of the Trump era.
December 20, 2017
Poems for the last latke: belated Chanukah verse, 2017
Matches
I have a huge pack of them but they’re all stubborn.
Like a Jack London story.
The wolf? Seasonal affect.
The danger’s a cold menorah.
Prometheus! I call thee!
I have latkes!
For the Third Night
I believe in the truth
Of before, during, after.
Such a god; ourselves.
No map or mirror
Enfolding everything.
Take a moment.
Watch it slither
Then shrivel
On the shiny table.
Be present at the
Loss of everything
Thought an old bridge
Crumbling like cake.
***
Seventh Night
All the lights that guide our days
Small, mundane and functional
Collaborate to frame the ways
We navigate the practical.
Do they make an ideal flame?
Not obviously, no.
But defeated, old, and lame
We might laud their glow.
November 21, 2017
The ethics of liver transplants — and what’s with coughing? A new installment of #AskDrBerger
Dear Dr. Berger,
What are the ethical arguments for and against providing an alcoholic with a liver transplant?
Robin Katcoff, Baltimore, MD
Find out the answer at the Talking To Your Doctor blog.
August 10, 2017
An important prescription
I’m an internal medicine doctor, which means I see adult patients in Baltimore. Today I saw one of my favorite patients. She has chronic pain and a particular gastrointestinal syndrome which leads to frequent hospitalizations. Both make it very difficult, and really — in practicality — impossible for her to work. Her disability is taking a while to come through, because “chronic pain” and “back pain” are too often not considered as “real disease” by the powers that be. She can’t afford many of her prescriptions because she lacks an income. She might get evicted any day.
I realized today what medical intervention would help her the most.
You know what prescription she needs?
Money. She needs money.
