David Healy

The picture shows Franz Mesmer magnetising a patient.  In between his hands and her head and heart there is a set of little slivers of  metal, capable of being magnetised - shown by the fact they are all lined up the same way.  The therapist was able to influence magnetic fields and could realign bits inside her similarly, undoing whatever blockages were causing her problem - … [Read more...] about Something Stupid This Way Comes

Jose Mario Bergoglio in Chile 2018: To believe in us you have to have Faith, but for me to believe in you you have to bring me proof Over 150 years ago, describing most of the medicines then available as junk, Oliver Wendell Holmes came up with one of the most famous phrases about medical practice, when he said that: If all the materia medica (drugs) could be sunk to the … [Read more...] about All the Better for the Fishes

January 28 2019. Open letter to David Haslam, NICE Dear David, Our paths nearly crossed at an IAPT meeting in London in 2016 but you opted not to speak in a session that had me covering “Some Questions for NICE” – a lecture covering issues that have given rise to this letter. We brushed by each other in May 2018 when Chris Van Tulleken, in The Doctor who gave up … [Read more...] about DH 2 DH

The recent moral panic around the Death of MR and the involvement of Instagram and Facebook in her death and maybe that of others is intriguing. Worthy of John Le Carre - at his Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy best. This may be a cynical attempt by the old media – the BBC or NBC, the New York Times or the Guardian to put pressure on new media like Facebook and Google. There are … [Read more...] about Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Surveillor

Dead Contact Following last week's post Are Old or New Media to Blame for Suicide, I had the following email from papyrus: Ged.Flynn@papyrus.co.uk David I’d be happy to have a discussion with you. Perhaps you could contact me. Many thanks Ged Ged is apparently a little more senior within the organisation than Chris. Ged you can get me on the phone number … [Read more...] about The Bridgend Suicide Mystery

Your Worst Horror The week of January 22 to 27 a series of stories of the death of a 14 year old young woman (MR) horrified many people in Britain.  This was first item on the BBC news for several days and on the front page of newspapers like the Guardian pushing Brexit, the US Government closure, Venezuela and Huawei aside. The way the story ran the new social media were … [Read more...] about Suicide: Are Old Media or New Media to Blame?

Fifty years ago today, January 19, Jan Palach died.  He had set fire to himself 3 days earlier in Wenceslas Square in Prague in protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. The spot was close to Charles University where Jan Hus had begun a resistance to religious oppression 5 centuries before that helped ignite the Reformation.  He may have fallen as he began to die … [Read more...] about Rest in Dissent

There has been increasing brouhaha about Fake News of late. In the general media, Facebook are apparently going to introduce panels of reviewers to take down posts that contain fake material. In the academic media, doctors are told not to believe what they hear in the media about the adverse effects of drugs - See Fake News and the Great Purple Pill as well as this article … [Read more...] about Fake Science, Fake Religion or Fake What?