After the Diagnosis: Transcending
Chronic Illness
Julian Seifter with Betsy Seifter
Physician and kidney specialist Julian
Seifter has written, with his wife’s help,
a valuable book for people with chronic
illnesses and their doctors. The pair
address two poorly understood issues
in medicine: how people cope with a
lengthy, life-threat-
ening ailment and
how to provide them
with medical care
that addresses their
psychological needs.
Julian Seifter
weaves these themes
into the story of his
own struggle with diabetes. He knows
the loneliness of patients, betrayed by
their bodies, facing physicians who see
only the disease. He understands the
compulsion to deny that an illness exists.
He appreciates the irony that chronically
ill doctors become better healers.
feedback
Lofty argument
I have been a fan of Science Service (now
Society for Science & the Public) since I
won a subscription to Things of Science
[science kit] as a boy in the 1950s, so I
feel I must correct a common misunderstanding on how an airplane wing develops lift as stated in your fine publication
(“Study finds light can be uplifting,” SN:
1/1/11, p. 9). Laura Sanders used the analogy of an airplane wing to contrast how
optical lift is generated and stated that
the airflow above the wing is increased
in velocity and thereby creates lower
pressure that, in turn, creates lift. But lift
is generated by deflecting downward a
mass of air equivalent to the mass of the
airplane. Though under certain circumstances low pressure can develop above
the wing, this does not create the lifting
force, nor is there any reason that the air
flowing over the wing must stay paired
with the air below the wing and thus
increase its velocity. This can be shown
by holding a stiff, thin board outside the
window of a moving vehicle and tilting
Seifter encourages patients — and
himself — to be “just sick enough” to
deal with medical realities while holding
on to life’s pleasures. Consider Mr. Lee,
a former professor of Chinese literature
with end-stage renal disease. Unable to
imagine feeling good again, he refuses
lifesaving dialysis. Seifter asks Mr. Lee
to read aloud in English from a book of
Chinese poetry, and as the two discuss
poems, Mr. Lee warms to the idea of trying dialysis to see how it makes him feel.
Then there’s ex-cop Bill, headed for
kidney failure due to diabetes complications. Bill won’t give up booze and
cigarettes. He turns down dialysis.
Some chronically ill people can’t make
drastic lifestyle changes and would be
miserable trying, Seifter says. A growing body of research confirms the
physical and emotional benefits of the
sense of self-control that this sensitive
physician contends that chronically ill
patients need. — Bruce Bower
Simon & Schuster, 2010, 243 p., $25.
the upstream end slightly upward. The
lift will be immediately felt.
Robert Latham Brown, Woodland Hills,
Calif.
Many readers wrote to say that the cause
of lift has nothing to do with pressure
differences, often ascribed to Bernoulli’s
principle. Bernoulli discovered that
faster-flowing fluid exerts less pressure
than slower-flowing fluid. The reasoning
goes that faster air on the top of a curved-top wing creates lower pressure than the
slower air on the wing’s flat bottom, generating lift and sucking the plane upward.
Some readers contended that lift is
instead caused by an action-reaction
type of force, in which the airfoil pushes
approaching air downward; as a result,
the plane moves up. This explanation is
true. In fact, some jets can fly with completely symmetrical wings, relying mainly
on this balancing act of downward-moving air and upward-moving force.
But before the Bernoulli explanation
crashes, Jean-Jacques Chattot, an aero-
The Making of
Modern Medicine
Michael Bliss
A medical historian
examines how society
came to put faith in
science to cure disease. Univ. of
Chicago Press, 2011, 104 p., $18.
The Evolution of
the Human Head
Daniel E. Lieberman
The story of human
evolution is encap-
sulated in the myriad
changes to the head’s anatomy,
traced here throughout the hominid
fossil record. Harvard Univ. Press,
2011, 756 p., $39.95.
How to Order To order these books or others,
visit www.sciencenews.org/bookshelf. A click on
a book’s title will transfer you to Amazon.com.
Sales generated through these links contribute
to Society for Science & the Public’s programs
to build interest in and understanding of science.
space engineer at the University of California, Davis, points out that it’s not so
simple. “Actually, both descriptions of
lift are correct,” he says. Lift can be calculated by summing up all of the various
local pressures on the top and bottom
of the wing. Lift can also be calculated
by analyzing the balance of momentum
between the two, and the action-reaction
balance. The equations describe different aspects of the same thing.
One explanation for lift doesn’t fly:
As the reader notes, nothing says two
air particles must travel set paths and
reunite after flying over the top and bottom of the wing, an assumption known
as the “equal transit myth.” The reasons
for airspeed differences and resulting
pressure differences are complicated,
but are not because the top particle must
fly faster to reach its partner on the
bottom. — Laura Sanders
Send communications to: Editor, Science News,
1719 N Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036 or
editors@sciencenews.org. Letters subject to editing.
