Medicine - Quillette

Woman feels backache spine pain because of UTI

Misreading a Flawed Study

Vaccination against UTIs is a novel idea that holds enormous promise, but clinical trials must be well-designed and carefully analysed.

Geoffrey C. Kabat

10 Feb 2025 · 5 min read

A young mother holding her baby. Both have dark skin.

The Life and Death of a Medical Study

A 2015 study found that black newborns attended by white doctors die at twice the rate of those in the care of black doctors. The study’s refutation last year has not altered the progressive narrative of systemic racism in medicine.

Stewart Justman

27 Jan 2025 · 9 min read

Eager to ‘Affirm,’ Yet Unwilling to Debate

A prominent South Carolina doctor and transgender rights activist has made a great show of calling England’s Cass Review “a sham at best”—but now refuses to say why.

Colin Wright

31 May 2024 · 7 min read

The Cass Effect

A landmark report properly emphasises the application of science, not slogans, in establishing treatment protocols for trans-identified children.

The Quillette Editorial Board

29 Apr 2024 · 14 min read

Defending Academic Freedom in Higher Education and Medicine

The success of the academy requires academic freedom and tolerance for viewpoint diversity. These critical values are under increasing threat.

Jeffrey S. Flier

25 Apr 2024 · 12 min read

Child in a plaid shirt playing with some multicoloured wires.

An Absurd Umbrella: Neurodiversity and the Autism Spectrum

Autism has become a catchall term to explain and dismiss the problem child. But it can also be viewed as a superpower.

Jason Garshfield

21 Apr 2024 · 9 min read

Banning the Blockers

Gender clinics from Stockholm to San Francisco have been running an uncontrolled experiment on children, while cloaked in the mantle of human rights.

Bernard Lane

25 Mar 2024 · 9 min read

The Placebo Effect’s Evil Twin

The Nocebo Effect occurs when we experience pain, depression, or illness based on nothing more than negative expectations.

Michael H. Bernstein

11 Mar 2024 · 8 min read

Ending the Hunger Games

New pharmaceuticals appear to offer a genuine solution to the problem of excess appetite, that uncontrollable urge to eat more than we need to that keeps so many of us fat.

Iona Italia

7 Sep 2023 · 25 min read

Unconscious Bias in Medicine: A Canard

Evidence that clinical decisions are driven by unconscious bias remains conspicuously lacking.

Stewart Justman

5 Sep 2023 · 8 min read

The White House’s Specious Gender Manifesto

The White House is claiming that the debate about childhood gender medicine is settled—even as numerous international experts are coming forward to say it‘s not.

Bernard Lane

13 May 2022 · 18 min read

The Ideological Aversion to Harm Reduction

Putting a patient under general anesthesia is a dangerous business. Waking a patient up from anesthesia is an ugly one. After I turn off the gas the patient typically thrashes and writhes like a sinner in Hell. Yet such resistance has never bothered me. I don’t want good and

Ronald W. Dworkin

17 Mar 2022 · 9 min read

Autism or Encephalitis? My Son’s Misdiagnosis and Our Family’s Season in Hell

Encephalitis recovery often takes years, not months, and some patients never fully recover.

S. Stiles

21 Jan 2022 · 19 min read

Rethinking Health Disparities

True progress in medicine can only be accomplished when we maintain a consistent standard of scientific excellence and honest inquiry.

Zachary Robert Caverley

24 Jun 2020 · 11 min read

How CRISPR-Enabled Gene Editing Could Change Our World: A Huntington's Disease Case Study

Because Huntington’s disease is caused by a single gene mutation, it is a prime early target for clinical trials involving somatic cell genome editing.

Françoise Baylis

18 Dec 2019 · 9 min read