Quick dip: Bonobo teeth, flu vaccines, death-of-midlist 3.0, death of the uninsured, and gory films : Neuron Culture

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I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.) I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years. Oliver Sacks found Reef Madness "brilliantly written, almost unbearably poignant." Check it out.

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Quick dip: Bonobo teeth, flu vaccines, death-of-midlist 3.0, death of the uninsured, and gory films

Posted on: September 22, 2009 9:46 AM, by David Dobbs

Eric Michael Johnson contemplates the hearts, minds, teeth, and claws of bonobos and other primates.

Tara Smith explains why she'll be getting her kids their (seasonal) flu vaccines. Revere does likewise

Daniel Menaker, former honcho at Random House, defends the midlist. (Where was he when my book was getting so much push?)

Just in case you missed it, lack of insurance is killing 45,000 people a year (Times) in the U.S. This doesn't include preventable deaths among the underinsured (like yours truly, who is sitting on some surgery that he'd rather put behind him). You can download the actual study here.

And Wired -- can we overstate the value of the Wired Science crew? -- has a great post about old surgical films from the 1930s. Silent. Fascinating. Not for the squeamish. This is also valuable simply for calling attention to the Wellcome Center's YouTube channel, "digitising medical history."

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