Would anyone like to help the cause of homeopathy? There is an interesting job description in the British Medical Journal this week. It is for both an expert and a lay person to ‘contribute actively’ to the Advisory Board on the Registration of Homeopathic Products. The pay is £275 a day, and they have 11 meetings a […]
Continue Reading →Column: Do infertility treatments work?
Many women suffer a great deal of heartache before reaching the thin blue line of a positive pregnancy test. There is a large number of infertility treatments and they do not work for everyone, by any means. Thousands of women take clomifene citrate, a drug that stimulates the ovaries, as part of their attempt to […]
Continue Reading →The right to hunger strike
The Lancet has a great editorial today. It’s about the need for guidance for doctors who are asked to assess prisoners who are hunger strikers. They say that doctors should recognise that hunger strike may be the sole method of protest a prisoner has. People who are starving, however, may become confused and disorientated; the difficulty then […]
Continue Reading →The quiet claims of fruit and veg
There are yogurts with cholesterol-reducing properties and other dairy products which can supposedly produce “optimal” bowel health. Then there are baked beans with “added omega threes” and drinks that profess to reduce blood pressure. The European Food Safety Authority is now providing “opinions” on the science behind such claims. However a lot of the claims […]
Continue Reading →Painful conclusions
I was in central Glasgow last week. On my rainy travails down Buchanan Street, I came across a tent pitched just beside the statue of Donald Dewar. Beside that was a mat on the ground with pictures of hot coals on it, that invited people to try and experience the trial of “chronic pain”. The […]
Continue Reading →Screening may do more harm than good
I am perturbed. The US Preventive Services Task Force, a government health body, has decided that doctors should stop offering prostate-cancer screening to men over 75. It has made a definitive statement: “Do not screen for prostate cancer in men age 75 years or older.” But instead of happy relief at this rare outbreak of […]
Continue Reading →Inequality kills
The World Health Organisation are presenting their findings of a three year investigation into the ‘social determinants of health’ today. The report is available here. We are all used to hearing that the latest health news is ‘shocking’ and ‘appalling’, but this report is a rare exception – it does actually deserve these descriptions. Life expectancy in one […]
Continue Reading →The curse of ‘wellness’
‘Health’ I understand. But ‘wellness’ ? ‘Wellness’ appears in the dictionary. But it is a mushy, ill-defined, nebulous word that is inherently anti-science (as it has no clear meanings or parameters). I find it to be a very irritating word. ‘Wellness’ is a word which, I have noticed, seems to increase in use in proportion to the money that […]
Continue Reading →Column: Why flu jabs for kids could protect the elderly
It may be summer, but doctors are already ordering stocks of vaccine ready for the flu season. The NHS pours a lot of money and effort into its annual drive to vaccinate as many people in the high-risk groups as possible, and it has a pretty decent record of doing so. So there’s a good […]
Continue Reading →Mortality not NHS’s fault
The latest medical scandal is that dead bodies are left on hospital wards for ‘hours’ before they are taken to the hospital morgue (so says the Herald in Glasgow, the Scotsman in Edinburgh, the Telegraph, the Independent and BBC News) . I discern a distinct lack of a story here. Dying happens, and I am […]
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