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 →Choices for screening and paternalism
Luisa Dillner wrote a statistically correct and informative article about breast screening in the Guardian recently; she has been replied to by Chris Askew, the chief executive of Breakthrough Breast Cancer. He makes a big mistake. In his first paragraph, he says “Breakthrough Breast Cancer hopes this will not discourage women from attending their breast-screening […]
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 →Bicycle helmet or not?
Trying to make an evidence based decision about this. I am a slow cyclist and prefer cycle paths to roads; I would extend my journey considerably if I could go by path instead. I don’t like busy roads and right hand turns. Twitter is being a great help: I am going to put down the […]
Continue Reading →Commercialisation, post conception, and via your GP
Excellent article in the Guardian about the National Childbirth Trust. The NCT have found that some hospitals are paying 5K to allow access to companies to come on to antenatal wards to sell their wares; photographs of babies, free samples of nappies, etc. I have complained about this before, in my own antenatal care. I […]
Continue Reading →Julian Tudor Hart
Recent mentions by @amcunningham as to his Cochrane lecture on EBM have prompted me to put up his seminal paper on the Inverse Care Law from the Lancet in 1971. Enjoy.
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