Julian Sheather is specialist adviser (ethics and human rights), policy directorate, BMA.
Poking around the bookshop at the Wellcome Trust, as is my occasional habit, I recently came across a small book, not much bigger than my hand, that, in spite of my seasonal poverty, I knew I had to buy. (I have never quite succeeded in aligning my passion for books with their price, some infant […]
When she was five, Hannah Jones was diagnosed with Leukaemia. Although successfully treated, the drugs weakened her heart and by the time she was twelve it was clear that without a transplant she would die. She declined the offer. Faced with a major operation of uncertain outcome, the prospect of a lifetime on medication, and […]
I have just been to a breakfast conversation on genetics and health care. I am not at my best early on, but as the LSE had assembled an impressive list of experts, I made the cold early morning trip to Simpsons on the Strand. The conversation had to do with the likely impact of the […]
I want to speak of a certain dread – call it a patient’s dread. I speak from experience. In my early twenties I went under the knife a handful of times. A little problem with a psoas abscess. All over now, thankfully, excepting the memories, but it is out of those memories that I want […]
I have been watching the French crime series Spiral (Engrenages) . The title refers to the way an investigation into a prostitute’s murder – she is dumped naked on a refuse heap – coils through the many layers of French society from its violent streets to its ruthless bureaux of power. At one point a […]
Once in every while an ethical dilemma will swim across the horizon, a dilemma whose wake will induce in me a bout of moral seasickness. My compass spins, my bearings wheel and lurch. One such is the reappearance of “facilitated self-harm”. I am not over-fond of the word “facilitate”. It drips with the oil of […]
Reader I am sick, sick if not quite unto death then very nearly unto despair. There is a gnawing within that will not let me rest. I have searched in vain for what to call my malediction. I have been sacking my shelves, rifling my dictionaries and encyclopedias, consulting with the most eminent physicians, but […]
As this is a scientific journal, I imagine its readers will have more than a passing interest in Darwin. It is hardly surprising. Darwinism is a scientific hypothesis of such revelatory brilliance, of such simplicity and such reach, of such sheer explanatory power that it is difficult to remain unmoved by it. […]
A few days ago I was reading an account by a journalist of a visit he had made to the refugee camps on the Nord pas de Calais coast just days before they were destroyed by the French police. Known collectively as “the jungle”, these camps are – or were – home to a floating […]
It was the White Queen who told Alice that she had at times thought six contradictory things before breakfast. We humans have a remarkable tolerance for incompatibility, happily living with any number of self-cancelling beliefs about ourselves and the world. So difficult is it to imagine – or at least for me to imagine – […]