“The persevering surgeon” an 18^th century cartoon by Thomas Rowlandson shows a surgeon leering over a dead female body, a sneering smile on his face and her breasts in his fascinated grope. Although this makes uncomfortable viewing, a fascination with the details of human anatomy is something visitors can relate to, as they walk through the Museum of London’s exhibition ‘Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men’.  Intricate sketches, eerie wax models, butterfly wing-thin cross sections of bone and tissue decorate the space, as the creators of the exhibition play up to their visitors’ morbid curiosity. more…

On the 8th and 9th of July 2010 the Faculty of Health and Social Care at London South Bank University will be hosting a pioneering conference focusing on Best Practices in Clinical Ethics Consultation and Decision Making. For the first time in the UK, this conference will bring together an international and inter-professional dialogue between different stakeholders with the aim of fostering and developing best practice in clinical ethics consultation and decision-making across all sectors of healthcare. more…

Yesterday, three women from the Republic of Ireland took a case to the European Court of Human Rights. The women argued that Ireland’s abortion law-whereby abortion is permitted only if the woman’ life is endangered-violates their human rights. Although this story only made it to page 54 of The Times newspaper I’m guessing it will be of higher interest to many of Ireland’s women, 6,000 of whom make expensive, secretive, and potentially hazardous journeys to the UK each year in search of the abortion which potentially makes them subject to life imprisonment back home in Ireland.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6950950.ece

Finding this story, for the second time, in The Times took me a while as I vainly searched in the ‘News” section only to realise I needed to look instead in the “World News”. An indication perhaps of how close the people of the UK and Ireland are in so many ways despite our shared and troubled history. A reminder also of how illusory that sense of closeness is, reflected all too starkly in the different approaches adopted by the UK and Ireland to the issue of abortion. And timely, as, by sheer coincidence, I facilitated, on the same day that the case came to court, a discussion amongst eleven first year medical students about legal, professional and moral rights and duties. more…