I was at the Liverpool Medical Institution recently, judging a debating competition between medical students from Manchester and Liverpool. […]
Julian Sheather
Julian Sheather is specialist adviser (ethics and human rights), policy directorate, BMA.
Julian Sheather on banned words
I know not whether to laugh or cry. Into my inbox has just popped an index prohibitorum, a list of words drawn up by the Local Government Association that must […]
Julian Sheather on placebos
Earlier this week, the fairly formidable Commons Science and Technology Committee published its report on homeopathy. For anyone who likes a bit of evidence with their medicine, the results were […]
Julian Sheather: Selling sickness to the worried well
I have an old friend with a long and complicated relationship with food. Several years ago she answered an ad in a woman’s magazine. She filled out a questionnaire, sent […]
Julian Sheather: In praise of minor ailments
I have just been ill. Not very ill. Not ‘under the doctor’. Just a lingering cold, a touch of manflu. In the end I took a day off. I woke […]
Julian Sheather: On form in nature
Poking around the bookshop at the Wellcome Trust, as is my occasional habit, I recently came across a small book, not much bigger than my hand, that, in spite of […]
Julian Sheather: The girl who said no to a heart
When she was five, Hannah Jones was diagnosed with Leukaemia. Although successfully treated, the drugs weakened her heart and by the time she was twelve it was clear that without […]
Julian Sheather: How much gold in the genetic glister?
I have just been to a breakfast conversation on genetics and health care. I am not at my best early on, but as the LSE had assembled an impressive list […]
Julian Sheather asks: What’s wrong with medical humanities?
I want to speak of a certain dread – call it a patient’s dread. I speak from experience. In my early twenties I went under the knife a handful of […]
Julian Sheather on moral responsibilities
I have been watching the French crime series Spiral (Engrenages) . The title refers to the way an investigation into a prostitute’s murder – she is dumped naked on a […]