Dr. John Roberts discusses aging and decline in John Updike’s writing in our Faculty Fellows Seminar on Health, Well-Being, Healing
By Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley
Last week’s Faculty Fellows Seminar in “Health, Well-Being, Healing” focused on questions of dying and, specifically, how new life-prolonging technologies compel one to rethink what it means to die. Dr. John Robertson of the School of Law presented his current research on Left Ventricular Assistance Devices (LVADs) and the later poetry and prose of John Updike. Dr. Robertson is especially interested in Updike’s short story “The Full Glass”—written shortly before Updike’s own death in 2009—about aging and decline. Updike’s protagonist reflects on a small detail of his daily life, filling his bedtime glass of water, to think about the end of life without directly confronting the experience of dying. Dr. Robertson’s work-in-progress on this material is entitled “Writers at the End—John Updike’s ‘The Full Glass,’” which he hopes to publish in the journal Literature and Medicine. Although “The Full Glass” does not address machines or surgical implants (such as LVADs), Updike’s writing reflects on the quality of life from the perspective of an elderly man.
Dr. David Crews presents lessons from biology in HI’s Faculty Fellows Seminar on Health, Well-Being, Healing
By Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley
At this week’s Faculty Fellows Seminar, Dr. David Crews (Integrative Biology) spoke about the mutual interdependence of the environment and human biology. Dr. Crews argued that the environment is permanently contaminated by the mass production of synthetic chemicals and other factors, and it is now impossible to return it to pre-Industrial Revolution conditions. Biological effects from human exposure to these chemicals can occur generations after the initial encounter (a process known as synchronicity). The impact of these chemicals can be seen beyond gene expression and, indeed, extends to human psychological and emotional responses. To illustrate these changes, Dr. Crews used the example of endocrine disrupters (EDCs)—chemicals that disrupt the collection of glands that secrete hormones into the circulatory system to be carried to target organs.
Structural formula for polychlorinated biphenyls
Dr. Crews specifically discussed one type of EDC, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), man-made chemicals used widely in industrial and commercial products . Even though the industrialized world ceased use of PCBs in the 1970s, PCB levels are still present in organisms today and have even been found in the Arctic Circle.
