Viviane Fairbank

Carlyn Zwarenstein felt the first signs of ankylosing spondylitis, a rare type of arthritis, at the age of twenty-eight. An aspiring writer and young mother in Toronto, she was devastated by the sudden onset of disease and its resulting pain. The chronic inflammation that began at the base of her spine gradually moved upward, making it nearly impossible for her to find…

Most of us have a delicate relationship with health care. We appreciate its availability, of course, but we prefer not to acknowledge its existence until it’s necessary. We like to think of the healing arts only when we are already in danger — and then they serve not as a threatening reminder of mortality but rather as a…

When it comes to food, our expectations of the future often tend toward the dystopian. At the turn of the nineteenth century, for example, the English political economist Thomas Malthus wrote a now-infamous essay, in which he argued that while population grows exponentially (doubling every generation, roughly), food supplies grow arithmetically, meaning they will never be able to keep…