Dr Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, wants us to eat less meat. Pachauri is an economist (and a vegetarian) who believes that reducing meat consumption could also cut greenhouse gas emissions. The idea seems to make sense, since about one-fifth of global emissions are produced by the meat industry. […]
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 →Column: Is warming up before you exercise a waste of time?
Exercise is good for you. This is the gospel that we doctors are enjoined to preach to patients – we even have prescription pads to refer people to the gym. But there is a snag: the more you exercise, the more likely you are to pick up a sports-related injury. We are taught from an […]
Continue Reading →Military medical ethics
Excellent pieces in the New England Journal of Medicine on military medical ethics, and psychiatrists‘ position in interrogations. There are concerns that army psychiatrists are being trained in areas which could conflict with professional ethics. Doctors are not meant to either conduct or participate in interrogations. However obtained documents suggest that the Department of Defense still wants doctors […]
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 →Homeopathy needs your help
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 […]
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