Oxford University Press has produced new materials for primary schools aimed at encouraging boys to read. I’m not qualified even to start pondering the biosocial reasons why young boys apparently read less well than girls in British schools – but I was amused by the name of this initiative. It’s called Project X …. […]
Category: Columnists
Liz Wager’s vital statistics
One of my best presents this Christmas was a slim book called the Pocket World in Figures, published by The Economist. […]
Richard Smith: Can poetry define health?
Reflecting on the challenge by Alex Jadad and Laura O’Grady to define health, I begin to conclude that it can’t be captured in a few words. Disease is a simple concept compared with health, and diseases can be defined — but with all the paraphernalia of pathophysiology, epidemiology, symptomatology, and the like. Defining health will […]
Julian Sheather on hope and human rights in Zimbabawe
Last week I was in Uganda, speaking at a conference on monitoring the right to health. During the conference I met a fourth year medical student from Zimbabwe, Norman Matara. Norman is a tall, slim, gentle, slightly stooped young man. He does not talk much, but when he does he is thoughtful and softly spoken. He […]
Richard Smith on the right to health
On first acquaintance the concept of a right to health can seem ridiculous. Why not a right to happiness, beauty, high intelligence, and Arsenal winning the cup every year? The right to health has been questioned legally and on grounds of feasibility and policy, but the Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen answers these questions convincingly […]
Richard Smith on why diabetes envies cancer
Those who campaign on diabetes envy those who campaign on cancer because cancer gets so much more attention than diabetes. Indeed, the diabetes campaigners are very frustrated that diabetes is so consistently neglected. Around 250 million people globally have diabetes, and because of the pandemic sweeping the world that number will increase to 380 million […]
Siddhartha Yadav: Sex and the city
Thamel is a busy tourist hub in Kathmandu. Its streets are lined by numerous shops, massage centres, bars, pubs, hotels, restaurants and even strip clubs, popularly known as dance restaurants. Life in Thamel begins with nightfall. This nightlife used to continue throughout the night. But not any more. A new directive by the home ministry […]
Julian Sheather on genetically modified organisms
One evening last week I found myself alone in the restaurant of a large golfing hotel in a remote corner of Essex. Probably because it happens so infrequently, I quite like having dinner on my own, even in a large golfing hotel. It means I get to read while I eat, something I am not […]
Liz Wager on Newton and the history of fish
Delays in publication are not new and neither, it seems, are bureacratic hurdles which mean that institutions fail to recognise important things. According to Wikipedia the Royal Society had no money to print Newton’s Principia Mathematica because “the Society had just spent its book budget on a history of fish.” But, luckily, Edmund Halley realised the […]
Julian Sheather on the architecture of happiness
I have recently been reading a report on ethical issues in public health from the Nuffield Foundation on Bioethics. It is a lovely document, subtle and interrogative, delightfully rich, as all good thought should be, in unanswered questions. […]