A couple of weeks ago, the government announced that, from 2013, all nursing staff would have to be graduates. “Degree-level education,” said Health Minister for England Ann Keen, will provide new nurses with the decision-making skills they need to make high-level judgements in the transformed NHS. I’m not so sure of this. […]
Category: Thinking Aloud
Does Medicine – and Medical Ethics – have a Pro-Life Bias?
There’s an essay by Diego Gracia called “Palliative Care and the Historical Background” that I frequently use in classes about Care ethics, and there’s a passage in it that always gets a fascinating reaction from students. In this passage, Gracia claims that the true goal of medicine has always been curing, rather than taking care of […]
When the Witch Asks a Question, I Can’t Resist
In the replies to this thread, The Witch Doctor asks this: A Scenario: Apparently there are some sites on the web just now claiming that the world is going to end in 2012. Some teenagers are becoming agitated. I don’t want to be around when the world ends, so I’m going to drink some poison […]
More on Science Journalism…
This thought hit me over the weekend in Tesco’s car-park; I was still mulling over the reliability, or lack thereof, of science reporting in the media. I was also thinking about the PCC and how powerless it is, largely because it’s simply a boys’ club for editors. However, in my finding-a-trolley reverie, it occurred to […]
Night Thoughts on Journalism
There’s an illuminating item that’s recently been posted on Enemies of Reason about the way that the press has been handling H1N1, and the way in which the distinction between deaths from and deaths with the illness has been blurred. And it’s very easy to look at the newspaper stands and laugh at the manner in which […]
Can Saving a Life be the Wrong Thing to Do?
Doubtless many of you will have heard by now of Kerrie Wooltorton, who, apparently depressed by her fertility problems, drank anti-freeze, called an ambulance, and handed a living will to staff at A&E. Her story is reported by the Telegraph under the headline “Suicide woman allowed to die because doctors feared saving her would be assault” […]
ECHR Rulings: Keeping the Faith
I’m going a bit off-topic with this, I think, but John Coggon’s reply to today’s earlier post has got me thinking. His reply pointed out that [i]t might be worth noting that Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (presumably the key right under issue) states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of […]
The difficulty of identifying gradual changes in health status
By David Hunter It wasn’t until I was eight that I first got glasses. This wasn’t because I wasn’t short sighted before then, rather the contrary I was very short sighted I just hadn’t noticed. I thought trees were just blurry green blobs at a distance, I sat at the front of the classroom so […]
DNA Databases and Crime… part 34
The New Scientist this week is running a series of short articles on how to make the world a better place. One of the suggestions is to legalise drugs – I’ve blogged about why this is a good idea before (and Ben Goldacre has a nice account of why we haven’t done it already). Another […]
Mental Illness – even if it’s Gordon Brown’s – is not Interesting.
Dependably right-wing blogger Paul “Guido Fawkes” Staines has been circulating the idea that Gordon Brown may be taking anti-depressants – specifically, Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors – under the touching and understanding heading “Is Brown Bonkers?” and making some sniggering schoolboy allusions to Malcolm Tucker-like tantrums. This allegation – and quite why it’s an allegation is beyond me […]