David Hockney has been talking to the BBC about the UK’s smoking ban: he’s not a fan, and suggests that there ought to be “smoking rooms” available. It’s not the first time that he’s gone public in his opposition to the ban – a few years ago he was interviewed on the Today programme and […]
Latest articles
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 […]
In Memory of Kerry Anne Stapleton Hunter
This year marks the tenth anniversary of my first wife’s death. Kerry Anne (KAS to her friends) had cystic fibrosis and passed away after a good hard fight on the 12th of September , 1999 a year and a half after we married. Kerry taught me many things and was really my main impetus for […]
Swine Flu: A Titanic Struggle
The Department of Health today launced Exercise Prometheus, an exercise for the social care sector to assess and develop its resilience planning in readiness for a second wave of the pandemic swine flu. Designed as an ‘off the shelf’ package primarily for use by local authorities in partnership with their local providers of social care, the […]
Physicians on Facebook
There’s a short piece in the latest JME about the use of social networking sites by medics that’s got me thinking. In it, Guseh, Brendel and Brendel suggest that physicians need to be especially careful about accepting, say, a Facebook friend request from patients because of the nature of social networking sites and the possibility […]
And Justice (and Healthcare) for All
A convicted double murderer has won the right to have cosmetic surgery to remove a birthmark on the NHS. Good. Predictably, the foaming-at-the-mouth brigade is having a field day with this in the comments section of the Daily Fail‘s coverage. Equally predictably, they’re wrong. The reason is straightforwardly to do with considerations of rights and […]
Conference: Research Ethics Committees – Help or Hindrance? UCL 12 Nov 2009
Interesting Research Ethics Conference at UCL in November, and I’m not just saying that because I am one of the speakers… […]
AIDS=Nazism?
This is a very strange story that’s been picked up by the Daily Telegraph: a German Aids charity has been attacked for launching an advertising campaign – and a pretty sexually explicit one at that – in which people who spread HIV are presented as Hitler. I’m not sure whether the target is people who […]
Oooops!
You may have heard last week about the Microsoft advert running in Poland that had been… um… how can I put it?… ethnically re-envisioned (and badly, too: even I could Photoshop an image more convincingly, and I’m like a blind monkey with scissors). And Ford got into trouble a few years ago for doing something similar. […]