Insights and Updates

When hearts were uneasy a while back, I received a gift — a patient of many years gave me a "kongling drum" (hollow-sky drum), with my name engraved on it. It is a new instrument with an ethereal, pleasant sound. As the pandemic raged, she…

I was among the earliest batch of Chinese netizens; I started going online in 1998. I once had three five-digit QQ numbers, and the QQ number I still use today is still five-digit — all of which prove that I am a "veteran-level" netizen. I…

Gibran said that he would not make friends with people who always think they are right, because such people are shameless. Everyone makes mistakes; a person who标榜 himself as a sage and cannot accept half a word of criticism from others, no matter how exalted…

Whether as individuals or as a society, the normal state is one of illness; being without illness is merely a miracle. We humans have always lived in symbiosis with pathogens; everyone is born carrying many kinds of viruses and bacteria and may at any time…

Smallpox was once an epidemic that swept across every country on earth; wave after wave of smallpox pandemics caused massive death tolls. Smallpox is caused by the variola virus. Smallpox has existed in human history for a very long time; observations of the mummy of…

From ancient times to the present, plagues and the accompanying economic crises have been catalysts for extremist ideas. The history of medicine tells us that whenever plagues rage and people face the threat of death, feelings of dejection, pessimism, and even despair appear and are…

Drug resistance is a common phenomenon in cancer treatment. Because cancer cells are constantly proliferating and evolving, they mutate during proliferation; daughter cancer cells are not genetically identical to parent cells. Therefore, drugs effective against the parent cells may not remain effective against some daughter…

From before the Lunar New Year until now, affected by the Spring Festival and the pandemic, my in-person practice has completely stopped. It has been 102 days since my study has had a new visitor. Because of Beijing's防控 policies, our entire building restricts outsiders from…

Paclitaxel, extracted from the yew tree (Taxus), is a commonly used chemotherapy drug with some efficacy against many types of cancer. But paclitaxel also has significant side effects: it has a strong myelosuppressive effect, and 78% of patients using it develop anemia, with some experiencing…

Understanding others and understanding oneself are neither easy things; there are not many people in this world who have self-awareness. Anthropologists hold that people tend to believe the civilization of their own society is the most advanced in the world; even backward cannibals believe their…