A striking aspect of clinician involvement in bioethics is the therapeutic focus they bring to the table. Time and again, when non clinician ethicists present dilemmas, the doctors propose fresh diagnostic and therapeutic options, from therapist inputs to treatment choices. These release a creativity that liberates problems from artificially dichotomous and often more emotionally charged […]
Category: Desmond O’Neill
Desmond O’Neill: The location of Ireland’s new national children’s hospital
One of the hottest topics in Irish medical politics finally came to a head this week with the announcement of the location of the new national childrens’ hospital, amalgamating the three Dublin paediatric hospitals on the site of an adult hospital. For the host institution, this was a step of the utmost importance, as its […]
Desmond O’Neill: You don’t make peace with your friends
It is not often that I find myself quoting Moshe Dyan, but his aperçu that you don’t make peace with your friends has gained wide currency. In medical terms this might best be translated that our debates and advocacy are best shaped in dialogue where there is true opposition and dissent. I was reminded of […]
Desmond O’Neill: 50 shades of stroke
Language in Ireland can be tricky and subtle, with many shades of meaning possible for even simple words such as “stroke,” as our minister for health discovered to his chagrin in the last few weeks. A coalition government of moderately right wing and moderately left wing parties assumed office in 2011 in financially difficult circumstances, […]
Desmond O’Neill: Anthropology, ageing, and medicine
The Meeting Room of the Royal Irish Academy is one of the hidden gems of academic architecture in Dublin, a city belatedly recognising the richness of its Victorian heritage (1). Behind a discreet red-brick façade on a busy street in central Dublin, the prelude to the experience is by way of a hushed procession through […]
Desmond O’Neill: René Magritte and the art of geriatric medicine
The addition of a cultural focus to scientific congresses is increasingly common. More often than not the event relates more to the city chosen rather than the subject matter of the congress. However, given that most great art relates to the human condition, it is difficult not to find interesting resonances between the art and […]
Desmond O’Neill: Nowhere to hide
The large gilded hall of the Musikverein in Vienna is instantly recognisable to most people from the annual New Year’s concert dedicated to the Strauss family and their contemporaries. In real life it is no less magnificent, although it feels smaller than the images projected by the televised event. Endowed with a crystal clear acoustic […]
Desmond O’Neill: Combating gerontological illiteracy
St Gallen is a fascinating small city in the north-eastern corner of Switzerland. Famed for its fabulous rococo monastic library (including the earliest extant manuscript of the Nibelung legend), the manufacture of sophisticated textiles, and one of the leading business schools in Europe, it is also the home to an intriguing initiative on ageing. For […]
Desmond O’Neill: Humour at one hundred
The study of centenarians is one of the fastest evolving fields of gerontology. In a seemingly paradoxical counterpoint to their almost inevitable tally of frailties, this group is simultaneously endowed with a remarkable psychological and physical toughness: the meek and the weak have died at earlier ages, rather like the first waves of Mosquitos succumbing […]
Desmond O’Neill: Bicycle helmets and the medical humanities
Emerson may have been right when he wrote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind, but it always sets my teeth on edge when I see a family out on a cycle excursion with the children dutifully wearing bicycle helmets and the parents gaily unencumbered. Doing as I say but not […]