Dr Howard Martin has been in the news recently for having told the Telegraph that he intentionally shortened the life of a number of his patients. On the face of it, his actions seem to be fairly straightforward, and to lend some kind of support to the fears of those who think that any easing […]
Category: In the News
Pharmaceutical Prohibition: as Successful as Ever
An item on Sky news the other day caught my attention. It concerned a new wave of legal highs being manufactured in China. The thrust of the report is that, in the wake of mephedrone having been banned a few weeks ago, enterprising Chinese chemists are working on a new set of chemicals designed to […]
Assistance and Force: Different Things
Imagine a world in which egg sandwiches are illegal. Given that I really don’t like eggs and that I particularly hate the smell of them, I have no desire ever to eat one; this world is fine by me. However, I’m aware that some people might, on occasion, express a desire for egg sandwiches. Some might […]
Official: The M-Cat is Dead.
So – remember those deaths that were linked to mephedrone use? The ones that started a moral panic and that led to the erstwhile government banning the drug in a desperate attempt to curry favour with the tabloids in the fag-end of the Parliament? Yep – those ones. Well, it turns out that Wainwright and […]
More on the Oklahoma Abortion Law
A couple of weeks ago, I posted something here about the progress of a handful of Bills working their way through the Oklahoma legislature that would, among other things, require that women have an unnecessary scan – potentially internal – before being allowed an abortion. I think that the proposals are pretty much indefensible. Not […]
Oklahoma, OK?
Roe v Wade ensured that women in the US had a constitutionally-guaranteed right to abortion protection from interference in decisions to terminate their pregnancy. What it didn’t do, though, was ensure that women could access an abortion easily. This means that there’s a number of means by which laws can be passed that make it extraordinarily […]
You and Me and Baby Makes more than Three
News emerged last night of a new technique for avoiding mitochondrial disease. From what I can tell, the technique looks like a version of Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, and it involves removing the nucleus from a fertilised egg and placing it into an enucleated donor egg. Doing this means that any problems with the mitochondria […]
Muslims! MRSA! or: How Journalism Works
The increasingly-tabloid Freethinker is running an indignant story about how – apparently – rules about bare arms have allegedly been relaxed for Muslim staff within the NHS (scroll down a bit – they’re indignant about quite a lot). Female staff who follow the Islamic faith will be allowed to cover their arms to preserve their modesty […]
The Slow Death of the ACMD
One of the most galling political sights of the last few months – and there’s been quite a range – has been the slow collapse of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in the wake of the Nutt farrago. Ever since David Nutt had the temerity to bring facts to the table in […]
Is there an Election Due?
So: Alan Johnson has announced that he’s going to stop people using mephedrone… no, wait: that’s not it… make mephedrone use as safe as possible… no, that’s not it either… prevent the price of mephedrone rising and thereby increasing the likelihood of petty crime… close, but not quite… make sure that people can get hold […]