The infamous physicist Alan Sokal, who gained a
"reputation" in SSK and STS by his critical parody "Transgressing the
Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"
published in Social Text in 1996,
launched another assault on what he called "pseudo-medicine" in his
public lecture "What is science and why should we care?," given on
February 27, 2008 in London.
Ten years ago, the Institute of Medicine
report To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System demonstrated that
up to 98,000 patients die in United States’ hospitals each year as
a result of avoidable medical errors. With this mortal diagnosis for health
care delivery, how can it be that subsequent meetings of the American College
of Healthcare Executives (ACHE), the executives responsible for health
care delivery institutions, continue to focus primarily on their leadership
development and self-promotion?
Among the many complications it
has encountered along its now 30-year march down the path of so-called
“reform and opening up,” China is now projected to have a surplus
of 20 to 30 million males by the year 2020.
Swine flu has infected everyone in the
United States. But it’s not swine flu itself that has been spreading like
a pandemic – it’s the panic-stricken rhetoric associated with the disease.
