It is perhaps stating the obvious that the best mode for exercising human rights is while still alive: as the Vikings stated rather bluntly in their eddaic saga Hávamál, “there is nothing the dead can do” (1). So it was with some sadness that I read, and re-read, the submission of the Irish Commission of […]
Category: Desmond O’Neill
Desmond O’Neill: Ageing with Keith Jarrett
The last time I heard Keith Jarrett was just over thirty years ago, a distraction from the tensions of final med with some fellow medical students. Even the choir balcony tickets were eye wateringly expensive, the compact and elegant National Concert Hall in Dublin barely half full on a damp November night, and the experience […]
Desmond O’Neill: Lessons of the Francis Report are not just confined to the NHS
One of the most striking theatre productions I have ever witnessed was a riotous Polish play called Birthrate, the highlight of the 1981 Dublin Theatre Festival. Starting with a stage set resembling a train compartment, all was sweetness and light as the first few passengers entered, ceding place politely to a mother and baby. However, […]
Desmond O’Neill: On transport as a contributor to economic, social, and personal wellbeing
Transport is the invisible glue that holds our lives together, an under recognised contributor to economic, social, and personal wellbeing. Unfortunately, in public health terms, our profession has allowed itself to focus almost exclusively on the downsides of transport. The chapter on transport in Marmot and Wilkinson’s otherwise excellent Social Determinants of Health makes for […]
Desmond O’Neill: A grave beauty
When visiting a city for the first time, graveyards rarely feature high on my agenda. So, little did I suspect that a very beautiful graveyard would be one of the aesthetic highlights of a recent short stay in Portland, Maine, a compact and attractive port city with interesting French influences. My host, the founder of […]
Desmond O’Neill: Think global, act local
Visiting Kennebunkport, Maine, in winter is a surreal experience, almost akin to playing an extra in the Truman Show. Neat clapper board houses and snow encrusted churches cluster around a serpiginous and sylvan sea inlet. In the grocery cum café store locals cluster over coffee and cinnamon buns amid the general supplies in an ambience […]
Desmond O’Neill: Turner, medical history, and ageing
Limiting access adds savour to most sensory experiences, a sentiment captured by Patrick Kavanagh in his poem Advent: “through a chink too wide comes in no wonder.” A narrow aperture to one such wonder is provided every January by the National Galleries of Ireland and Scotland, one that also has interesting linkages to both medicine […]
Desmond O’Neill: Graphic insights into Alzheimer’s disease
In my practice as a geriatrician, no syndrome is as interesting, intellectually stimulating, and simultaneously frustrating and rewarding as dementia. Ethical sensitivity, integrative neurology, a critical approach to neurobiology, and a kind but dogged inquisitiveness underpin the knife-edge act of supporting the patient within the complex web of family and insufficient social and societal supports. […]
Desmond O’Neill: Shaken and stirred
A key challenge of teaching gerontology in health sciences is to liberate ageing from the confines of later life and to view it as a continuous process across the life course. No neater (or more unlikely) support can be found than the themes of ageing, utility, and retirement permeating Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie. […]
Desmond O’Neill: The age friendly university
All innovation is characterised by many false starts, but occasionally an event feels like the real deal, a sure sense of a phase shift in our world. This was the case earlier this month when I found myself sharing the speakers’ platform with the Irish Taoiseach (prime minister), Enda Kenny, at the launch of an […]