Atul Gawande (previously) is a highly respected expert on systems thinking, preventative medicine and dying with dignity has published an excellent editorial about the medical shortcomings of the Senate GOP's tax-break/health cut bill.

Atul Gawande (previously) made an enormous shift in the practice of medicine with his research on checklists, summarized in his book The Checklist Manifesto; Gawande identified a core paradox with checklists, which is that surgeons hate to use them, finding them reductive and tedious, but overwhelmingly, surgeons would prefer to be operated on by other surgeons who were using a checklist to guide the procedure.

Deon is a project to create automated "ethics checklists" for data science projects; by default, running the code creates a comprehensive checklist covering data collection and storage, modeling and deployment: the checklist items aren't specific actions, they're "meant to provoke discussion among good-faith actors who take their ethical responsibilities seriously. — Read the rest

Jon Mooallem's beautiful profile of BJ Miller tells the tale of how Miller lost three of his limbs in a stupid accident and became a pioneer of palliative medicine: but for me, it's also a story of the very best of San Francisco's blend of technology, optimism, compassion and exuberant weirdness — a blend that has been changing for the worse since the dotcom bubble of the turn of the century.

The 2014 BBC Reith lecture with Dr Atul Gawande (previously) continue to amaze, delight and inform, and the third one, "The Problem of Hubris," fundamentally changed how I think about (and what I fear about) death.

Dr Atul Gawande (whose Reith lecture on systems thinking I featured last week) took to Twitter to express his shock and disgust at the medical professionals who participated in the crimes documented in the CIA torture report.

The lecturer for the BBC's 2014 Reith lectures is Dr Atul Gawande, a celebrated author and MD whose book The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right is a classic on how to think about systemic problem solving (which pays attention to how different people and activities come together to make and solve problems).

"Amir Hall (or Mir, as his family calls him) was originally arrested in October 2007, for the unarmed robbery of a Verizon store. He made off with $86."

Amir ended up imprisoned in solitary confinement, and eventually hanged himself in his cell. — Read the rest

If you haven't read this 2008 New Yorker article about a woman who had a chronic itch on her head and over time scratched through her skull in till she reached her brain, here it is. And when you're finished, give this song a listen. — Read the rest

Atul Gawande's New Yorker feature "The Hot Spotters" is a fascinating look at a small group of doctors and medical practitioners who are working on reducing systemic health care costs by doing data-analysis to locate the tiny numbers of chronically ill patients who consume vastly disproportionate resources because they aren't getting the care they need and so have to visit the emergency room very often (some go to the ER more than once a day!) — Read the rest

(Photograph contributed to the BB Flickr Pool by Alexandra Jones)

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was released from a London prison this week, after spending ten days without his freedom over allegations of sex crimes.

The presumed Wikileaks leaker believed to be responsible for the organization's most damning disclosures, Bradley Manning, has spent many months in military detention. — Read the rest

Last night I listened to a New Yorker podcast interviewing Atul Gawande, author of an article in the latest issue about itching. It's fascinating.

"Scratching is one of the sweetest gratifications of nature, and as ready at hand as any," Montaigne wrote.