The 100-Year Turnaround in Child Survival with Perri Klass, MD
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is how women's health has been for decades. People aren't studying women because they have this excuse that it's too complicated. In the beginning I think they tried to treat us like just don't worry your pretty little head about this, just run along and we'll take care of the science. So this lack of insight m makes women poorer. This community had been there all along in the shadows. We'd all just kind of been dealing with it. In the shadows. You know that spot, right? But despite the obstacles, things are changing. Women's health is not half of healthcare. We are more than half the market. Someone should be doing this, so why not me? I'm Golda Arthur, and this is Overlooked, a podcast with a point of view that women's health cannot wait, not anymore.
And this season we're bringing you stories and conversations with people who are moving the needle. Scientists who are doing some wild things right now in women's health. It is unusual. We are collecting menstrual blood because it is just a source of so many great cell types and biomarkers. Researchers who are learning more about Alzheimer's and women, this made me think, oh my gosh. Alzheimer's disease could start as soon as the brain stops developing. And men who are stepping up. Get them to shift to curiosity and you have planted the seed of a champion. And more stories about endometriosis, preeclampsia, birth control, ovarian cancer, tampon testing, C-sections, and menopause. This season features episodes that will open up your understanding of the science inside your body.
And you can take that information straight to your next doctor's appointment. And this season's guests have Strong opinions. She basically said, I think you're thinking of menstruation as an illness. I can just sit here and free bleed if I want. And I think they got the message loud and clear. If we had been studying women all along and they said to us that we had to study men now, we would say, but men are too simple. It's not a good representation of biology. Season five is coming September sixteenth. So follow the show now wherever you get your podcasts.
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This is the Nocturne's Conversations. I'm Emily Silverman. Today I'm joined by Perry Klasse, pediatrician, professor, and author of The Best Medicine: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future. Perry's work braids medicine, history, and storytelling to show how within just a few generations, parents went from expecting to lose children to expecting them to grow up. In our conversation, we talk about Perry's journey as a physician writer and what reporting taught her about science communication, the lost world of routine childhood death, and the cultural shift that followed. How sanitation, pasteurization, rehydration therapy, antibiotics, and vaccines drove child mortality down dramatically in the last 100 years, vaccine skepticism today, and how clinicians
Can listen and advocate, and the rise of the Well Child and Parenting Advice Culture. This is a rich conversation and probably could have gone on for two hours longer than it did because there was so much to cover. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. But before you dive in, take a listen to Perry, reading from her book, The Best Medicine.
Our grandparents and great grandparents and all the parents before throughout history expected that children would die. It was a known and predictable risk that went along with being apparent. Now we expect children not to die. We are the luckiest parents in history. We who are part of this wave over the past seventy-five years or so, because we are the first parents ever who have been able to enter into parenthood in the hopeful expectation of seeing all our children survive and thrive. And we are also the luckiest children in history, born into an era when we could expect to grow up along with all our sisters and brothers, to
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–17:16
2
Who is Perri Klass and what is her background as a pediatrician‑author?
17:16–24:10
3
How did childhood mortality change from the 19th to the 20th century?
24:10–50:19
4
What personal letters and stories illustrate the impact of early child death?
50:19–58:22
5
How did Perri Klass become a physician‑writer and develop her writing career?
58:22–1:07:17