I’m going a bit off-topic with this, I think, but John Coggon’s reply to today’s earlier post has got me thinking.  His reply pointed out that

[i]t might be worth noting that Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (presumably the key right under issue) states:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”

This has got me thinking about the nature of that supposed right. more…

It must have been a slow news day: a nurse is seeking legal advice after being told by her employers that she wasn’t allowed to wear a necklace at work.  What’s so - ahem - special about this is that it’s a crucifix necklace:

Mrs Chaplin has sought advice from the Christian Legal Centre (CLC).

Its founder, barrister Andrea Minichiello Williams, said patients would be “astonished” at the trust’s actions.

“You cannot separate a person’s faith and motivation from other areas of their life, including what they do with the majority of their time: work.

“Unfortunately an aggressive, secularist, politically-correct agenda is being driven in the NHS and other public sectors at present.”

The CLC said it intended to assist the nurse in exercising her human rights.

Human rights?  Um… nope.  You might have a right to religious practice (and even then, it presumably can’t be more than a right to practice your religion in private, can it?), but I can’t for the life of me see how wearing a crucifix is central to anyone’s religious practice - rather, it’s an advertisement of faith, and there’s no right to proselytise or advertise.  Moreover, talk of “an aggressive, secularist, politically-correct agenda” just looks foolish - which is appropriate, becasue it is.  A hospital is a secular institution, dammit.  So’s the NHS.  It’s not about pushing a secularist, PC agenda: it’s about being secular and not having to bend to the non-secular.

What seems particularly disingenuous about this is the way in which the CLC presents this as an attack on Christianity, rather than a simple application of a rule about jewellery.  The Daily Fail seems particularly keen to present the story in that light:

Christian nurse removed from frontline duty for wearing cross necklace

screams the headline, before churning out the same quotations as the BBC (which makes me wonder whether the journalists reporting the story for either body have done more than recycle a CLC press release).  However, across at Tabloid Watch, MacGuffin points out that

[i]f [the story had] read ‘Nurse removed from frontline duty for wearing necklace’ would anyone be interested? No. But that is the story.

Or, rather, the non-story.  Would an NHS trust be justified in forbidding Christian jewellery?  Nope.  Would it be justified in forbidding certain kinds of jewellery across the board?  Um… yes.  Obviously.

Finally, the nurse in question does herself no favours:

“Everyone I have ever worked with has clearly known I am a Christian - it is what motivates me to care for others,” she said.

To which the obvious retort is this: do you mean that, were it not for your religion, you wouldn’t care for others?  That the non-religious are somehow uncaring?  Really?

It wasn’t until I was eight that I first got glasses. This wasn’t because I wasn’t short sighted before then, rather the contrary I was very short sighted I just hadn’t noticed. I thought trees were just blurry green blobs at a distance, I sat at the front of the classroom so I could read the board, I thought the other students just didn’t want to be able to read the black board… In other words I had just adjusted to my condition, such that I didn’t notice it. Getting glasses was a revelation suddenly the world was clear.

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David Hockney has been talking to the BBC about the UK’s smoking ban: he’s not a fan, and suggests that there ought to be “smoking rooms” available.  It’s not the first time that he’s gone public in his opposition to the ban - a few years ago he was interviewed on the Today programme and spent his time banging on about how the ban was “destroying bohemia” - because, clearly, sitting in a smoky pub is a necessary condition of artistic achievement.  Take away the smoke, and the talent vanishes.  Or something.  In actual fact, he just sounded like a very confused and crotchety old man.

I suppose that Hockney’s position is broadly libertarian - in the interview on the link I provided above, he makes accusations about governmental paternalism.  If it is the case that the smoking ban is paternalistic, then he may have a point: though I think that there are times when paternalism is warranted (and I’m certainly suspicious of the kneejerk “paternalism=wrong” response that you sometimes see in bioethics), I can also see the arguments against it.  However, I simply disagree that the ban is all that paternalistic: yes, it does make smoking that bit less attractive when it’s cold and rainy outside; but a concerted paternalism would have meant that smoking was also banned in open spaces and, where possible, in private.  (Escalating the tax on fags, by contrast, may be more straightforwardly paternalistic; the acceptability of doing so is for debate at another time, though.)

One of the better arguments for a ban - and one that Hockney doesn’t address - is motivated by a concern for the people who’d have to work at one of these smokers’ havens. more…

The New Scientist this week is running a series of short articles on how to make the world a better place. One of the suggestions is to legalise drugs – I’ve blogged about why this is a good idea before (and Ben Goldacre has a nice account of why we haven’t done it already). Another is to learn to love genetic engineering – and again, I’m all for that.

But one of the suggestions is that the police should have access to a universal DNA database - and this is not something for which I’m cheering. more…

Dependably right-wing blogger Paul “Guido Fawkes” Staines has been circulating the idea that Gordon Brown may be taking anti-depressants - specifically, Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors - under the touching and understanding heading “Is Brown Bonkers?”  and making some sniggering schoolboy allusions to Malcolm Tucker-like tantrums.  This allegation - and quite why it’s an allegation is beyond me - leads Fawkes to muse that

[i]n the context of all this speculation and his manifest physical unease, surely somebody in the Lobby has to publicly ask the question at the PM’s next monthly briefing: ”Prime Minister, have you been taking medication that may affect your judgement?”

But it’s not just Staines that’s casting doubt on Brown’s mental health: he’s asked me to point out, and I’m happy to clarify, that he’s simply following up a story in the Independent that was saying the same thing, except more speculatively (and coquettishly)

Senior Whitehall bods are reported as noting that [Brown] was recently given a long list of things he absolutely must avoid, and that among these are Chianti and cheese. Both are well-known for causing a violent, even lethal reaction to a specific group of heavy duty antidepressants known as MAOIs (Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors).

See how it works: there’s a rumour that Brown has been given a list of foods to avoid, a suggestion that this might be because of some medication, and BINGO! he’s a nutcase.  Of course, because his article’s in the Indy, Matthew Norman is careful to add all kinds of “Of course, I’m not saying…” caveats -

[w]hether literally the case or not, however, this rumour carries the kind of psychological truth that tends to be more damaging than fact.

- but only after having demanded disclosure:

You’d have thought that whether our Prime Minister is severely clinically depressed falls loosely under the public interest header, but what can you do? Our political system regards secrecy less as desirable than its raison d’etre.

See?  From “There might be some foods the PM’s avoiding” to “There’s a conspiracy to cover up the fact that he’s bananas” in two easy steps, with a little side-helping of “I’m not saying that… except I am” as a garnish.  Of course, there’s a range of references to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, natch, because there was a law passed in 1473 saying that every media story about mental health had to have at least one such citation.  Possibly.

There’s a range of things to question about this story: more…

This year marks the tenth anniversary of my first wife’s death. Kerry Anne (KAS to her friends) had cystic fibrosis and passed away after a good hard fight on the 12th of September , 1999 a year and a half after we married.

Kerry taught me many things and was really my main impetus for becoming interested in medical ethics. It was a natural extension of the many discussions we had had.

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The Department of Health today launced Exercise Prometheus, an

exercise for the social care sector to assess and develop its resilience planning in readiness for a second wave of the pandemic swine flu. Designed as an ‘off the shelf’ package primarily for use by local authorities in partnership with their local  providers of social care, the exercise has been developed by the Health Protection Agency from experience gained in previous pandemic influenza exercises.

I like this a lot - although I have to admit that the main attraction for me is the choice of “Prometheus” as the title.  It’s nice to see that someone in the DoH has a classical education and a nerdy obsession with etymology.

There’s a short piece in the latest JME about the use of social networking sites by medics that’s got me thinking.  In it, Guseh, Brendel and Brendel suggest that physicians need to be especially careful about accepting, say, a Facebook friend request from patients because of the nature of social networking sites and the possibility that normal privacy rules may be violated.  (For the rest of this post, I’ll talk mainly about Facebook, but that’s just for convenience.  The points will stand in relation to any social networking site.)

I can see something of the motivation for the worry here, but I’m not sure I share it.  The reason for this is that I have yet to be convinced that the online world presents us with any new problems: all it does is re-manifest old ones.  For that reason, there’s nothing about which we need to get all that excited.  Nor is there anything special about physicians, as opposed to anyone else, on FB.

Let’s start with the first area of dispute: is there anything special about online social networking?  more…

A convicted double murderer has won the right to have cosmetic surgery to remove a birthmark on the NHS.  Good.  Predictably, the foaming-at-the-mouth brigade is having a field day with this in the comments section of the Daily Fail’s coverage.  Equally predictably, they’re wrong.

The reason is straightforwardly to do with considerations of rights and justice.  I’m going to assume - fairly safely, I think - that the nub of the criticism is that being a convicted murderer means you lose the entitlement to certain social rights and benefits.  (Indeed, I’ve overheard many people at the bar saying things along the lines that, if you break the law, you lose all human rights - and it was only because I was busy serving other people that I could restrain myself from saying something withering in reply.)

The loss of rights claim is easily put to bed. more…