The swine flu vaccine is officially here. The UK government announced on Friday that over 400,000 doses of the swine flu vaccine will be delivered to hospitals this week. The first to get the jab (from Wednesday) will be hospital inpatients belonging to at-risk groups and hospital staff. Next week GPs are due to start vaccinating […]
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Tony Waterston on an inspirational lunch
Can a book launch set the mind afire? Unlikely – sounds more a chance to get cheap copies and the author’s autograph and maybe some nice canapés. But the launch I attended this week for the ‘Health practitioners’ guide to climate change’ (Jenny Griffiths et al, published by Earthscan) was indeed inspirational. It was partly […]
Tom Nolan on flu: A lucky break
England’s chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson can sound gloomy and pessimistic but he sounded very upbeat in this week’s swine flu update, saying: “We may have got a lucky break in how the virus has behaved at the start of our flu season and we may be able to get the vaccine out there […]
Joe Collier says good riddance to old-fashioned respect
I have never liked the idea of showing respect for people simply because of their social standing. I am in favour of treating people with respect in a general sort of way, so being polite and considerate. I respect nature or property, so protecting or nurturing rather than damaging or destroying. I respect people for […]
Dr Harry’s Netlines: Crystal ball gazing
It is always good fun to speculate what will be happening in medicine in years to come. There are so many areas to think about clinical, diagnostic and therapeutic breakthroughs; political and economic aspects, and technological innovations. It is the latter, I want to discuss and speculate about. […]
Helen Macdonald on Panorama Special; swine flu
The BBC trailed it as everything you need to know about swine flu. The title probably raised my expectations too high. A street poll near the start of the programme showed that the public were a bit confused about who was at the most risk of swine flu, so it seemed the programme had some […]
Joe Collier on the need for ‘oholisms’
From the outside, most people appear to conduct themselves in a normal, essentially humdrum, manner. However, in many (possibly most) of us there are odd, and often secret, compulsive behavioural traits which, in extremes, can dominate a person’s life and occasionally be a wrecker. Classic examples of such behaviour are the compulsive alcohol drinker (as […]
Tom Nolan: Swine flu estimated to be 100 times more virulent than seasonal flu
PLOS Currents: Influenza is a journal with a difference. Mixing features of a journal with those of blogs and discussion forums it’s bound to ruffle some feathers. It describes itself as “a moderated collection for rapid and open sharing of useful new scientific data, analyses, and ideas.” Contributions are not peer reviewed other than for […]
Tom Nolan: The flu will be back after the break
Two swine flu call centres in England will close on Sunday with the loss of 1200 jobs reports The Guardian. Demand for Tamiflu has plummeted: it peaked on 27 July with nearly 39,000 authorisations for the use of Tamiflu while on 16 August there were only 3396. According to the HPA there were only 11,000 new […]
Joe Collier: How spells and trances aid learning
Over the years I have sat through plenty of lectures that have been plain awful. There have also been those which simply glued me to my seat, where time flew by, where information just flowed in, and after which there was a glow of satisfaction. […]