Having been sacked from his position as the chief UK government drugs advisor Professor David Nutt may today be reflecting on the precarious position of anyone who seeks to advise politicians on controversial matters. more…

I was out for dinner with a New Yorker friend of mine recently. She’s British, but she’d brought along an American friend and I happened to mention to him how much I was digging President Obama. Things deteriorated from there. “Obama is a socialist!” the heads of the rest of the table turned, as the conversation up until that point had been about interior furnishings. more…

There was a new moral panic last week. Teenagers are “sexting” each other and, using magic new distribution channels, sometimes these images are distributed way beyond their original recipients. There’s concern that once set free, sexts are being seen by paedophiles. As the Mirror newspaper puts it: “Sex texts sent by teens found on pervert websites.” more…

Recently I saw a patient who has problems with use of multiple recreational drugs and alcohol. The patient had never seen a psychiatrist before, but has been taking an antidepressant for the past few years. This is prescribed by a hospital physician. I almost never prescribe medications outside a psychiatric remit, but antidepressants are regularly prescribed by doctors whose area of expertise is not psychiatry. GPs, ITUs and stroke wards often start their patients on these medications, and hospital physicians can also be very fond of them. more…

I went to a debate on complementary medicine recently, hosted by the KCL Social Medicine Society. Despite being held on Guy’s Hospital Campus, a supposed stronghold of conventional medicine, the lecture theatre was awash with complementary therapists and when the pre-debate votes were taken the numbers were two to one against critics -like me - of complementary practice. more…