The Healthcare Commission have published a report today about the state of the NHS. On Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, they had Dr Michael Dixon speaking. He is a GP and chair of the NHS Alliance, as well as being a Trustee of Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health. Dr Dixon took issue with the charge […]
Continue Reading →Pain and the Virgin Mary
There are lots of reports that “faith in God really can relieve pain” and such in the press at the moment. These reports are based on a study published in Pain (yep, medical journals have all the most exotic titles: Gut, Brain, Breast, Lung….) and the abstract is available here. Unsurprisingly, the research does not prove anything […]
Continue Reading →Cancer, poverty and pay-to-access journals
I had intended to use this evening to read the paper published by the British Journal of Cancer about survival rates from cancer over the past 20 years. This paper has had a lot of media attention. The upshot seems to be that people are living longer after a diagnosis of cancer, but those living in affluent areas (still) […]
Continue Reading →Congratulations from Gordon Brown
Hospital acquired MRSA infections in the UK have apparently fallen by a third in the last year according to the Health Protection Agenc y. Gordon Brown is writing to all NHS staff to say well done. I foresee problems. There have been a couple of political drives on MRSA recently which have been non-evidence based; the […]
Continue Reading →Junk food, fish oils and prisons
Lots of media coverage on a new study today, which is apparently going to compare the reported offences of prisoners while taking either placebo or a fish oil+multivitamin+mineral supplement. Some headlines have interpreted this as ‘Prison study to investigate link between junk food and violence’. I think that’s an extrapolation too far; the quality of the food the […]
Continue Reading →Clinical trials and TV
Just as I was working out how to play a Harry Potter DVD an amazing television advert came on. It’s only broadcasting in Scotland but you can see clips at Get randomised. The website doesn’t say who is funding the ads, but I am impressed at the way that fair clinical trials are being promoted as a good thing […]
Continue Reading →The Professor Peter Higgs Fan Club
I don’t think that Peter Higgs has a fan club – yet. An interview with him in New Scientist this week reveals why he should have one. He is the theoretical physicist who has predicted the existence of a particle now known as the ‘Higgs boson’ which explains the origin of mass and which the […]
Continue Reading →Reality TV and mental health
There is a piece in the Observer this week about the Jeremy Kyle show. The author says that people with serious mental health problems are prey to the exposure these kinds of shows bring. These shows – where aggressive confrontation and public goading are to used to provoke and taunt people about personal problems or issues – are nasty to watch. […]
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 →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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