Sorry to have been away from the blog for so long recently. Holiday diversions: If you are struggling to entertain children in the long, long, Christmas holidays, I recommend the Naked Scientists Kitchen Experiments . I met one such Naked Scientist (fully clothed) at an event at National Pathology Week earlier in the year. Also, […]
Continue Reading →Pitfalls of a health column
When I suggested, a while back, that walking was fabulous for health, I thought I was giving readers of this column sound advice. All the evidence suggests that it’s good for mental, physical and environmental health, as well as being something many people find pleasurable. Who, I thought, could object? Well, the man who wrote […]
Continue Reading →World’s poorest left out from breakthroughs
Sometimes, it is easy to recognise a good idea. Oral rehydration solution, a simple sugar and salt formula, costs about 10 cents per packet. Since its development in the 1970s, it has saved millions of people, mainly in the developing world, from dying of diarrhoea. It could well have saved those in Zimbabwe who, in […]
Continue Reading →Drink and be merry – just don’t overdo it
Every year, as the Christmas festive season gets going, my heart starts to sink. Flyers for parties offering “10 free drinks per person!” are plastered all over the gym. Pubs roar with drunken office lunches. Getting sloshed seems to be normal, if not mandatory. Excess, of course, can be lots of fun. I have six […]
Continue Reading →Another exciting advertisment from the MHRA
Yep. In this week’s BMJ, is an advert for a ‘vacancy for a member’ for the Herbal Medicines Advisory Committee , which advises the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency on the ‘safety, quality and efficacy of herbal medicinal products for human use.’ Of further concern to me is that they wish their newly appointed member to have […]
Continue Reading →What the NHS can learn from organ donors
As an unschooled observer of the money markets, I have been struggling in recent months to understand what anything is actually worth. In healthcare, there is a similar problem, though it makes for rather less exciting headlines. All NHS procedures have to be costed to the last penny, and reported on in “completed care episodes”. […]
Continue Reading →Should the NHS underwrite cosmetic surgery done abroad?
The British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons have issued the results of a questionnaire asking surgeons if they have had to give emergency treatment to people who have had cosmetic surgery abroad. Unsurprisingly, the answer was yes. This is only the tip of an iceberg – there have been reports of patients returning […]
Continue Reading →Breast cancer: to screen or not to screen?
A very interesting paper just published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The study followed women before and after the introduction of a breast screening programme in Norway. They were compared to a control group of women who did not take part in the screening programme, but who would have been, had the programme been started in […]
Continue Reading →Hard choices on hormone replacement therapy
When I was at medical school, hormone replacement therapy was not just the treatment of choice for the flushes and sweats of menopause. It was also thought to reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes, dementia, colon cancer, bone and even teeth loss. Yet over the past few years new research has made many doctors […]
Continue Reading →Is paracetamol still safe for children?
Medical lore has created something of a cult around the measurement of children’s temperatures. A fever seems to be something which is suspected and then recorded, swiftly followed by the administration of medicine to “bring it down”. Some confessions. My home medical kit isn’t up to much. At one point it did contain a thermometer, […]
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