My daughter calls on WhatsApp. Through the summer of 2018 she spent hours staring down a microscope to distinguish fly wings from plastic films, and fish eggs from plastic pellets. […]
Mary E Black
Mary Black: Covid-19 heroes—putting faces to the numbers
I count things for a living—trend lines go up, go down, and I check that the story of those lines makes sense. I look for patterns: what are we missing […]
Mary E Black: Covid-19—This too shall pass
And so we enter a new world of social distancing, people stocking their larders, and limitations on how we can gather. Borders are closing, airports are shutting down, and in […]
Mary E Black: Koalas are not just for Christmas
I hang the last tiny-koala-in-a-Santa-hat on our family Christmas tree when the call from Sydney comes in. My colleagues are coughing. They are also sneezing blood. Their local coffee shop […]
Mary E Black: The Irish Border and Brexit
Liam Farrell, until recently Crossmaglen’s GP, has made me weep. On Twitter he posted: @drlfarrell. “I practised on the Irish border for 20 years, saw many of your young soldiers […]
Mary E Black: “Manels” and what to do about them
Mary E Black on how to avoid manels […]
Irish abortion referendum: If you have seen one woman die of a botched illegal abortion, you have seen one too many
Mary E Black discusses how her own views on abortion have been shaped by her medical training and life […]
Mary E Black: Five reasons to write an obituary
Regrets in life are a drag, they pull you back into what might have been, and a sort of destructive nostalgia. Obituaries on the other hand are a reflection and […]
Mary E Black: Death is no longer just in the hands of god or fate, but often a decision
There is much discussion about the right of an individual to die, but not enough about the role of relatives and friends […]
Mary E Black: Creating a path for organ donation
Every time the story of an organ donation is told, that path is more fully trodden […]