Author: John A. Frantz
John A. Frantz practiced medicine from 1946–2006. He taught internal medicine as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1968 to 1970.
The Biology of Addiction
Let us speculate about the tendency we have to become addicted to substances such as alcohol, caffeine, and cocaine. Caffeine is our primary example. Can there be any countervailing advantage associated with the ability to become addicted? Yes. Addicts tolerate fatal doses of the substances to which they are addicted without even getting sleepy. Imagine …
Agribusiness and ‘Original Sin’
“. . . The original sin of agribusiness will haunt mankind more or less indefinitely.”
A Linguistic Consequence of Music Appreciation
Music appreciation is almost impossible to explain as a product of evolution, as illustrated by this quotation from Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man: “As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man . . . they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious …
Evolutionary Biology for Everyone
In everyday life, evolution explains phenomena that nothing else can—and not just in biological specialties. It is the master key to much that has been locked in mystery. If you seek real understanding in almost any field, you must not reject evolutionary theory. It has never been my bread and butter, as I practiced medicine …
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Amateurs
Cognitive behavioral therapy is now a worthy replacement for psychoanalysis. It didn’t come into use until long after I received my medical training. But lately, I have gained some insig ht into how it works—and realized that in my sixty years of general medical practice, I had been applying the technique without knowing it! By …
A Case for Genetic Engineering
Tomorrow’s Table, Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food, by Pamela C. Ronald and Raoul W. Adamchack (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-530175-5) 199 pp. Cloth $29.95 The authors of Tomorrow’s Table, Pamela C. Ronald and Raoul W. Adamchack, are a plant geneticist and the manager of an experimental organic farm at …
Major Nuances in Population Control
Most experts agree that the present world population cannot live in reasonable comfort without experiencing serious environmental deterioration—and this in as little as one generation. I first began to think about this issue in the late 1960s and early ’70s (from 1968–70, I lived in Afghanistan). Controversy over China’s adoption of its one-child policy was …