Julian Sheather is specialist adviser (ethics and human rights), policy directorate, BMA.
On coming into force, the Mental Capacity Act (MCA), by deftly drawing together common law and permitting, via new powers of attorney, the nomination of substitute health decision makers, looked set to move practice in anticipatory decision making into a new era. The MCA is certainly a good act. It is supported by principles, focuses […]
I have recently been enjoying a brief flurry of reviews of Catherine Hakim’s Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital. Hakim’s book has been bounding up the notoriety charts, which is less than surprising given the hyperventilatingly simple premise that has caught the eye of reviewers. Hakim – a senior researcher at the LSE – […]
Once in a while I make a mistake at work – in spite of my best intentions, the human will out. By and large though, people are little inconvenienced by my blunders. And where they are, and where I cannot put them right, I am usually happy to apologise. Taken in the right way there […]
Being a self-sacrificing soul I recently enrolled myself in a critical piece of public health research: I gave up alcohol for January. If appetite is the new front-line in health, if our desires are becoming the death of us, then self-restraint must be the new penicillin, and, to squeeze the analogy a little, the Petri-dish […]
I was at the Frontline Club recently, watching how the world changes. A grandiose claim perhaps, the latter, but the occasion was a debate on the journalistic impact of the Wikileaks phenomenon. Vaughan Smith, the club’s owner, is currently giving handsome houseroom to Julian Assange, Wikileaks’ founder. In journalistic terms a slightly starry line-up: Ian […]
I recently attended a seminar concerned with human rights violations of women forced or coerced into sterilisation, a joint undertaking by the Open Society Institute and the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organisations. For a week I was a guest in a handsome villa in snow-softened Salzburg with health professionals and human rights […]
Middle-aged; mid-life; mid-career. Party to the blessings – and the curses – of a young family. A sense that some things have been achieved, some are still to be achieved, while some, alas will probably not be. A feeling also that life’s funnel is narrowing. If hope, as I cannot remember who said, makes a […]
We live in momentous times. Foundations are being shaken; long-held assumptions overthrown. The relationship between citizen and state is being redrawn. Consider only the health service. So much that seemed immemorial put to the sword. PCTs on their way out. Quangos to be torched. All that seemed solid melting into air…Time then for men and […]
Although undoubtedly a fine publication, I think it is probably fair to say that it is not every day that the Journal of Medical Ethics puts in an appearance in a major work of contemporary fiction. Imagine my delight then, mid-way through Philip Roth’s torrential late novel Sabbath’s Theater, when the following appeared, attributed to […]
I was out with a friend recently, a GP. He works in an inner-city practice. By all accounts he is a good GP. As a mate I know him to be passionate, hard working, and committed. He is bright, with interests that range way beyond medicine. I got to know him when he was a […]