Tag: health

AIDs, beginning to present

The back page description for this book reminds us that people have only known about AIDs for about 30 years. Given it’s global impact, that’s pretty amazing. Jacques Pepin’s book, The Origins of AIDs, looks its initial spread from chimps to humans, and then how it rapidly infected people by many different means. One of the worst culprits in its spread was actually a massive vaccination program meant to prevent a different epidemic.

This book is a valuable read for anyone from those concerned with the current state of Africa to anyone in a health related field, and is available now on our new book shelf.

Use the library to understand the sustainability push on campus

 

We get a lot of books to support the campus’s sustainability push. Pros, cons, debates, and more fill the pages of many of our new items, like today’s book: Powering the Future: The Problems & Possibilities of Green Energy. Learn the differences between alternative and renewable resources, explore the debates about certain fuels that might not pay off in the long run, and the impact these have on developing nations.

All of that and more issues are summed up in this great introductory text to the big issues inside sustainability. Remember, we’ve got plenty more like this one. Just ask a librarian!

Money over medicine in today’s book

How bad is America’s healthcare system? Many already feel that the need to make profit is more important for pharmaceutical companies, but the author of today’s book believes it to be much worse.

White Coat, Black Hat by Carl Eliot contains many purportedly true horror stories from the medical world. Companies letting money jeopardize the testing process, secretly bankrolling every-day physicians, patients as consumers with no chance for advocacy, scholarly research journals depending on drug corporations’ advertising dollars, huge gifts frequently accepted by doctors from companies… It’s a big, scary list! It should be interesting for anyone entering the medical profession, people concerned with patients’ rights and advocacy, or anyone with a shady doctor.

Let’s Talk Health

If you talk to a number of librarians, they’ll tell you some of the most dreaded questions for many of us involve things such as “Does this look infected?”, “I have a cold/flu/Strep/stomach virus/black lung, is it contagious?”, or similar medical-themed inquiries.  I beg of you: ask a doctor, not a librarian. Or at least ask it over the phone.

But! for when need be, a handy-dandy reference guide such as Answering Consumer Health Questions : The Medical Library Association Guide for Reference Librarians is a relief.  But you know, it isn’t just a librarian’s perusal tool.  Much like questions related to law, librarians aren’t always in the proper position to dish out medical advice, so library users may benefit from a flip-through or two of a guide like this.  Michele Spatz guides her audience through resources, procedures, and limitations of what can be done by librarians.  Remember: just because librarian’s have all the answers doesn’t mean they won’t use common sense in dolling out the wisdom.