should be treated with humanity. Free link to BMJ article here.
Continue Reading →The Health bill : lack of coverage is a bad prognosis
Health and Social Care Bill has apparently been carried. The government won with a majority of 65. Look at the ‘debate’ here – a sedate affair, with plenty of jolly laughing, a bit of sexism, and an aside about the wonders of complementary medicine thrown in. A sixth year debating society would have done better. Meantime, the […]
Continue Reading →More or Less
Little 7 minute section on the placebo effect, acupunture, and ethics. Available on listen again on iplayer, here.
Continue Reading →Mind and complementary medicines
I’m always looking for good sources of information to share with patients. Sometimes people share what they’ve found with me. My criteria: well explained, fair, evidence based, updated, and clear about uncertainties. And so I must report my unhappiness with the Mind website, in regard to complementary and alternative medicines; their website: “complementary therapy is one […]
Continue Reading →Please don’t let the NHS die
The health bill is capable of destroying the NHS. I wish this was hyperbole. It’s not. I am in Scotland, where things are a bit more sensible. Markets were tried, with Independent Sector Treatment Sectors, but because our hospitals tend to be geographically distant, it’s not really feasible to have a competitive market based system […]
Continue Reading →Do not resuscitate – why death needs to have heart
So: Addenbrooke’s hospital are being sued for allegedly illegally using a ‘do not resuscitate order’ on a patient. The patient had allegedly expressed that she wished to be resuscitated, but apparantly the order was written anyway. Meantime, we have Iona Heath writing in the BMJ about how CPR “amounts to yet another scenario within contemporary medicine where […]
Continue Reading →Freedom of information requests vs science research
Free link, and follow up in the BMJ to the newspaper headlines such as “Hundreds of preteen children treated for eating disorders”.
Continue Reading →“Better GP training needed to reduce maternal deaths”
Oh no it’s not. It’s all political. The headline is from the Herald. It originates from this BMJ editorial, whose first line is “Since the first report of the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths in 1952, the maternal death rate in the United Kingdom has decreased dramatically.” They say that “many doctors are unfamiliar with […]
Continue Reading →GENERIC PRESS RELEASE FROM (health charity)
I do feel slightly guilty about this, because there are some very good health charities out there. BMJ summer column. Dear [health journalist], As awareness day/week/month for [disease] is coming up fast—just the thing for those summer slow news days!—we have lots to offer you for features, comment, articles, photos! CELEBRITY! We are very happy […]
Continue Reading →The NHS opened up to devastation
Guardian: “He pointed out that the former prime minister’s abnormal heart rhythms could today be treated by using the telephone to measure the heart beats and give an instant diagnosis, followed by a call from a nurse advising on whether the patient needed to “go to hospital or not”. “You could cut dramatically the number […]
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