This is a bit of a strange post, not least because it involves citing sources – a blog post, and a whole blog -that have since been taken down from the net, for reasons that will become clear. It’s also going to involve a pair of fairly hefty quotations, largely because it’s the absence of […]
Category: The Art of Medicine
Eating Disorders and Ramadan
One of those things that’d simply never occurred to me before was highlighted a few days ago in a story on Buzzfeed: how do you reconcile Ramadan fasting with recovery from an eating disorder? Indeed: can you reconcile them at all? “Food is obviously a big part of the holy month,” Sofia says. “Usually after […]
Re-Engineering Shared Decision-Making
Guest post by Muriel R. Gillick When physician-law-professor, Jay Katz, published The Silent World of Doctor and Patient in 1984, shortly after I completed my medical residency, I felt he was speaking directly to me. He was telling me what kind of physician to be – not the old-school, paternalistic physician who told patients what treatment was best, […]
The Talking Cure Taboo
Guest post by C Blease Talking cures have never been so accessible. Since 2007 the UK government has invested £300 million launching its Improved Access to Psychological Treatments scheme. The goal is to train up to 4000 therapists in a particular branch of psychotherapy – cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT is the most widely researched […]
The Death of Sidaway: Values, Judgments and Informed Consent
Guest post by Kirsty Keywood (University of Manchester) On 11th March Nadine Montgomery won her case before the UK Supreme Court to gain compensation for the failure of her obstetrician to warn her of risks associated with the vaginal delivery of a large infant – a risk which she would have averted by requesting a […]
Flogging and the Medic
You must, by now, have heard of the Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi. Just in case you haven’t (really?), here’s a potted biography: having set up the secularist forum Free Saudi Liberals, he was arrested for insulting Islam and showing disobedience. Among the formal charges he faced was one for apostasy, which carries the death penalty in Saudi. […]
Adrenaline, Information Provision and the Benefits of a Non-Randomised Methodology
Guest Post by Ruth Stirton and Lindsay Stirton, University of Sheffield One of us – Ruth – was on Newsnight on Wednesday the 13th August talking about the PARAMEDIC2 trial. The trial is a double blind, individually randomised, placebo controlled trial of adrenaline v. normal saline injections in cardiac arrest patients treated outside hospital. In simpler terms, if […]
Paternalism up a Mountain
“Paternalism” is one of those words that has a hell of a lot of power. On several occasions, I’ve seen it used as a trump to shut down an argument: saying “But that’s paternalism” is, at least sometimes, treated as a way of showing that anyone arguing in favour of the allegedly paternalistic action is […]
Athletic Sex
There was an interesting article published in the BMJ a few days ago on the subject of athletes and their sex. Here’s the opening gambit: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and international sports federations have recently introduced policies requiring medical investigation of women athletes known or suspected to have hyperandrogenism. Women who are found to have […]
Resurrectionism at Easter
There’s a provocative piece in a recent New Scientist about what happens to unclaimed bodies after death – about, specifically, the practice of coopting them for research purposes. Gareth Jones, who wrote it, points out that the practice has been going on for centuries – but that a consequence of the way it’s done is that it tends […]