By Mel

She’s a Hero

kimberly-munley-hero-fort-hoodThank goodness for a brave woman with character to spare

Five feet and four inches of pure skill and courage, Kimberly Denise Munley, at lunchtime Thursday, saved an unknown but large number of people from injury and death. She did it by running straight toward a terrorist armed with two guns blazing at her and she kept walking into that deadly barrage until both of them fell with serious wounds. Around them were the bodies of the twelve people the terrorist had murdered and at least thirty he had injured—one, it turned out, also fatally. Read more

What is “the Self”?

And assuming we can answer that, how is science changing it?

Big philosophical concepts bother me, but I am expected later this week at Tufts University, where I’ll be on a panel discussing “The New Biology and the Self.” So I need to get over my reluctance to talk about the self. And it’s not the only big idea that gives me trouble.

Consciousness and free will are two other notions Read more

The Crab in the Breast

In breast cancer, promising approaches of twenty years ago are still…promising.

Today I talked about breast cancer to an audience already energized about Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Among other things, I told them that diseases need lobbies, and that breast cancer has one, having learned from the AIDS awareness movement, which in a momentous few years in the 1980s turned our country toward committed prevention.

But in breast cancer, science has made limited progress Read more

And the Nobel Peace Prize Goes to…

Whatever we think of the choice for this years prize, the runners-up deserve some attention.

Since even Obama reacted with disbelief to the news, saying in effect what everyone else said—that it was based on expectations, not accomplishments—I thought I would look into other nominees who were in effect runners-up.

One was Hu Jia, a Chinese dissident and AIDS activist Read more

Senator Rockefeller Fights for Health Reform

A fighter for real health reform loses with grace, grit, and compassion for all who languish outside the health care system.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) has long been one of my heroes. In 1994 I testified before a full hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, the same committee now marking up the bill to introduce health reform. Sen. Rockefeller is one of the few members who were on the committee in ’94 and are still on it now.
Read more

Who Lies About Health Care?

Because I was involved in health care reform in the ’90s–two books, four or five New York Times op-ed pieces, a couple of essays in Newsweek , and two testimonies before U.S. Senate committee—a lot of people ask me to help them separate fact from fiction in the current debate.

Tensions are high. When a congressman from South Carolina, long and widely known as a fool and a boor, yelled, “You lie!” Read more

One World?

Prof. Mari Fitzduff, who I’m honored to call a friend, set me thinking the other day when she commented on a proposed speech I wrote for President Obama to substitute for the one he gave in Cairo. But before I share our exchange, you need to know that Mari is the director of the Conflict and Coexistence Program at Brandeis University, where she moved after many years as director of INCORE, the International Conflict Research Institute in (as she always says it to avoid taking sides) “Derry/Londonderry,” Northern Ireland. In that role she played an important part in the years and years of mediation that finally brought a blessed end to that terrible conflict. Read more

Men, Women, and Iran: An Exchange

My friend and colleague Prof. David Blumenthal wrote this comment on my last posting, and I try to answer it below.

Dear Mel,

I’m not sure I agree that educating women is the way to go. As long as Islamic
men have the following cluster of problems, no amount of women’s education
will work:

(1) Islamic men have no empowerment – not economic, not religious, not
political, etc. This is also why Arabs can’t negotiate a peace; they have to
be empowered, to win. (2) Islamic men believe that submission is the
ultimate value – for themselves and especially for those who defy them. Read more