Yesterday, three women from the Republic of Ireland took a case to the European Court of Human Rights. The women argued that Ireland’s abortion law-whereby abortion is permitted only if the woman’ life is endangered-violates their human rights. Although this story only made it to page 54 of The Times newspaper I’m guessing it will […]
Category: Film and Media
District 9 and Man’s Inhumanity to Man: a filmic guide to dehumanisation
I am fortunate enough to count Professor Jonathan Glover, a world renowned medical ethicist, amongst my former teachers. A very modest and thoughtful man, Jonathan Glover spent a number of years writing a similarly thoughtful book in which he tries to understand what he terms man’s inhumanity to man (Humanity: a Moral History of the […]
The beauty of the beast that is Australia: unforgiving and unforgettable
Half a lifetime ago I went to Australia for my medical elective, a joyous interlude just before finals that allows doctors-to-be to savour, for one last time, the freedom of life as a student. Eight weeks is barely time to get over the jetlag let alone to adjust to the stark and breathtaking landscapes that […]
Two Lovers: a film about love, loss and living on the edge
Albert Camus argued that anyone who chooses life over death is an absurd hero. Absurd because Camus could see no logical reason why anyone would choose the pain and suffering that living even the most blessed of lives entails when ultimately the struggle to stay alive will surely fail. And heroic because, in full knowledge […]
Sex, suicide and surgical blues: getting under the skin of Grey’s Anatomy
I’d always hoped that one day I’d finally get to grips with the contents of Gray’s Anatomy. Perhaps then I’d be able to write the sort of blog my friend Babette- a sport’s physician- would like me to write. To quote Babette, she’d like me to write something “simple, like sports, or the athlete’s heart, […]
House MD: just what the doctor ordered
http://www.fox.com/house/gallery/ Back in the mid-80s when, as a junior doctor, I went to work in the US, I caused a mini-panic amongst the nurses by refusing, at least for a short while, to sign “MD” after my orders. An order in this context being a written order to the nurses to do the myriad of […]
Understanding childhood obesity:the Wellcome Trust film and video archive goes digital
I’m grateful to Christy Henshaw for letting me know about an exciting new project from the Wellcome Trust. So far about 100 films from the Trust’s vast archive of film and video have been digitalised and can be viewed by anyone, free-of-charge, on-line. A brief glance at the titles led me to a fascinating insight […]
Sex and the City Beirut Style
Caramel, to be precise: a delicious film from Lebanon that gives a brief insight into the lives of five women friends. Unlike in Sex and the City, there isn’t any on-screen sex in this film. Nevertheless, the main protagonists in these two newly released films would, I suspect, recognise many of their own challenges in […]