Emerson may have been right when he wrote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind, but it always sets my teeth on edge when I see […]
Desmond O’Neill
Desmond O’Neill on the medical and ethical themes in Prometheus
Switching off can be hard in medicine. No matter where one turns, the observational reflex kicks in, prompted by the goitre of the newscaster or the Bell’s palsy of the […]
Desmond O’Neill: Aiming to lose
Working as a doctor in Ireland has many positive aspects, particularly a warm human ambience and a remarkable love of the spoken word. On the debit side of the linguistic […]
Desmond O’Neill: The ethics of advocacy
The infant’s eyes are huge, the profile of its tiny cheek bisected by a naso-gastric tube and its ugly adhesive patch. Peering from the corner of the billboard, the image […]
Desmond O’Neill: Old ideas
The year has barely started, but it is a fairly safe bet that one of the stand-out albums of 2012 will be Leonard Cohen’s Old Ideas. For the many (including […]
Desmond O’Neill: One hundred years of flautitude
No geriatrician could pass up on the opportunity: a performance of a flute concerto written by a living composer in his 100th year by one of the greatest orchestras in […]
Desmond O’Neill: Donizetti and the GP
It is almost certainly the most unique operatic experience in Europe. As you walk up a narrow street of terraced houses in a small coastal town in south-eastern Ireland, you […]
Desmond O’Neill: Quantitative easing – the academic version
The economic downturn has given us all a crash course in the arcane language of economics. A fine example is “quantitative easing,” a sober and serious sounding euphemism for the […]
Desmond O’Neill: Death and the composer: Thanatos as muse?
Even though my clinical life is enmeshed with an active arts and health programme with music in pole position –a composer in residence in the Stroke Unit and a hospital […]
Desmond O’Neill: First night of the Proms
It is a sure sign of the ever diminishing pool of memorable acronyms that even the most treasured of ceremonial events can be hijacked for the basest of clinical motives. […]