The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s report on homeopathy was published today (and is available here). The findings have not been diluted; the Committee didn’t sugar the sugar pill. […]
Category: The Art of Medicine
A Very Small Post about Homeopathy
I know I keep stressing the distinction between ethics and activist – and how it’s usually just before I witter on about something vaguely activistic. However, I do think it’s worth popping over to look at the 10:23 Campaign, which takes a robust and sceptical attitude to homeopathy. If you’re not sure about why it’s […]
Teaching Ethics in Medical Schools
My attention has wandered recently to this editorial in Clinical Medicine, concerning the place and content of ethics education in the undergraduate medical curriculum. There’s nothing Earth-shattering in there, but the piece does draw out a few persistent problems with teaching ethics within the medical degree: […]
Nursing by Degree
A couple of weeks ago, the government announced that, from 2013, all nursing staff would have to be graduates. “Degree-level education,” said Health Minister for England Ann Keen, will provide new nurses with the decision-making skills they need to make high-level judgements in the transformed NHS. I’m not so sure of this. […]
Biomedical Ethics Film Festival
Edinburgh, 20-22 November Details here […]
Philosophy of Medicine Workshop, Bristol, 28.x.09
This looks like it could be interesting… Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol This is an informal workshop on topics in the philosophy of medicine. Everyone is welcome. •09.45–11.00 Kevin Brosnan (Cambridge) “Does nothing in medicine make sense except in light of evolution?” •11.15–12.30 Jeremy Howick (UCL) “Defining a role for mechanistic reasoning in EBM” […]
If you’re at a loose end in London…
I found myself yesterday at the Wellcome Collection, one of my favourite museums in London and somewhere I visit reasonably frequently (not being too big, and conveniently located on the Euston Road, it’s perfect to fill those odd hours between the end of the hangover and the train back to Manchester). The permanent exhibition has […]
Cosmetic Surgery and the Purpose of Medicine
For quite a while now, I’ve had the idea that I’d like to write something about the purpose of medicine – it’s something I’ve been adding on job applications for about 5 years, but I’ve not got around to doing all that much about it yet. The question as I saw it was whether medicine […]
Morgellons and Noble Lies
Here’s a poser: imagine that your patient comes to you reporting the canonical symptoms of a condition that is untreatable. You agree that this patient is suffering from something, and that the reported symptoms tally with those that are reported by other sufferers. However, the reason that the disease is untreatable is that – frankly […]
The ethics man strikes again – ethics checklists
Daniel Sokal has been busy again Success from surgical checklists breeds idea for ethical checks suggesting that clinicians ought to consider adopting an ethics checklist to use on their rounds. […]