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 […]
Continue Reading →The quiet claims of fruit and veg
There are yogurts with cholesterol-reducing properties and other dairy products which can supposedly produce “optimal” bowel health. Then there are baked beans with “added omega threes” and drinks that profess to reduce blood pressure. The European Food Safety Authority is now providing “opinions” on the science behind such claims. However a lot of the claims […]
Continue Reading →Painful conclusions
I was in central Glasgow last week. On my rainy travails down Buchanan Street, I came across a tent pitched just beside the statue of Donald Dewar. Beside that was a mat on the ground with pictures of hot coals on it, that invited people to try and experience the trial of “chronic pain”. The […]
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