By G. Owen Schaefer The effects of recent massive cuts to USAID are still unfolding, but the likely catastrophic consequences for the globe are evident. A recent analysis estimated that the program prevented over 90 million deaths in the past two decades due to efforts in treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other […]
Category: Rant
Politicians, Delusional Managers and the Future of the NHS: Have NHS Leaders Failed to “Speak Truth unto Power”?
Guest Post by David Lock QC [NB: This is a slightly longer version of a post that appeared on the BMJ blog earlier today.] Politicians, delusional managers and the future of the NHS: have NHS leaders failed to “speak truth unto power”? This blog is not a rant – well not too much of a […]
Natal Nativism
Scene: the boardroom of a large NHS Trust, somewhere in England. “And so that brings us neatly to the last item on the agenda: passport checks for pregnant women who want a checkup. The thing is, you see, that it turns out that we’ve been providing obstetric care to some women who aren’t actually UK citizens. […]
Gouging
Jumping to the defence of pharmaceutical companies over their pricing policies isn’t fashionable – and a lot of the time, it’s not going to end prettily. But it’s perfectly coherent to think that the profit motive is one of the motors of innovation, and that it’s part of the quid pro quo for spending money on […]
Stay Classy, BMJ.
Lord only knows, it pains me to jump to George Osborne’s defence – more so by resurrecting a meme that was already past it when I was first invited to run this blog in 2008 – but on this one occasion, I’m going to have to do it. Last week, the BMJ reported about a case in […]
Apologising for the Wrong Thing
A little addendum to yesterday’s monster post. Ivan Oransky reports that, before deleting her Twitter account, Hope Amantine had apparently also said in a tweet that the story was “not meant to offend”. I’ve noticed that a lot recently: a person does something wrong, is publicly called out for it, and apologises for any offence […]
Oh, dear, Richard…
Look, I know that Twitter really isn’t the place for nuanced debate. But, by that token, everyone else should realise that as well – especially intellectual superstars. So how, then, to explain Richard Dawkins’ spectacular foot-in-mouth moment earlier today? It started off reasonably enough, with him tweeting about Catholicism’s stance on abortion and providing a […]
Welcome to Britain.
It having been a long time since my last post, and this being the season of good-will, I wasn’t going to comment on the government’s new policy of charging migrants for A&E services. Noone needs that kind of spleen on a dreich Monday; besides: I’ve got a PhD thesis that needs assessing, and a bathroom […]
How to write a crap essay/paper in bioethics – or how to write bioethics to be published in medical journals…
By David Hunter I’ve been considering writing a reflective piece about the general quality of bioethics papers in medical journals, focusing on how the medium (the audience and the severe word limits) impacts on the message and its quality – possibly as a bit of a moan since I’ve not yet managed to get a […]
Gay Conversion “Therapy”: Might the CMF have a point?
Spoiler alert: Almost certainly not. But hear me out for a bit. The Christian Medical Fellowship blog had an article posted yesterday about what it praised as a balanced documentary concerning “sexual orientation change efforts” – gay conversion therapy to you and me – on Radio 4 on Sunday. Actually, it wasn’t a documentary – it was […]