By the Rivers of Babylon Societies keep order. They have to. For millennia, religion has been key to achieving this. Religions may aspire to make men free and able to live a full life but they also embody a set of rules designed to keep chaos at bay. A Superego whose mission is to keep an Id in check. This has been particularly clear in the religious regulation of … [Read more...] about Where Does Change Come From?
Burn Baby Burn
Editorial Note: This is the third part of a talk giving to the BNPA on February 22. It follows on from Tweeting While Psychiatry Burns and Tweeting While Medicine Burns. The final group of slides are HERE. The talk you have just heard was first given in Toronto on Thursday November 30 2000 to mark the 75 anniversary of the University Dept and 150 anniversary of the Queen … [Read more...] about Burn Baby Burn
Tweeting while Medicine Burns
Editorial Note: This is part 2 of a 3 part lecture given on February 22 that began with Tweeting while Psychiatry Burns. The text and slides continue from last week. The slides for this part are Here. The numbering continues from last week. When his office was ransacked, Delay's world was turned upside down but psychiatry and doctors are still here - so we won, didn't … [Read more...] about Tweeting while Medicine Burns
Tweeting While Psychiatry Burns
Editorial Note: This is part 1 of a lecture given at a British Neuropsychiatric Association meeting in London on February 22 under the heading of Psychopharmacology: 1952 - 2017. The lecture will feature here in 3 posts of which this is the first. Slides 1 -11 can be found HERE. The Birth This picture is taken from a newspaper in 1952. It features Jean Delay wearing navy … [Read more...] about Tweeting While Psychiatry Burns
Mickey Nardo: Tangled up in Life
Mickey Nardo died yesterday. I got to visit with him and his wife Sharon on the phone a short while before he got involved with Jo Le Noury, Jon Jureidini, Melissa Raven, Catalin Tufanaru, Elia Abi-Jaoude and me Restoring Study 329 in 2013. It was one of those moments - I can still remember exactly where I was sitting when I made the phone-call. Sharon had just come back … [Read more...] about Mickey Nardo: Tangled up in Life
Generalists and Partialists
An issue that crops up in comments on both this and the RxISK blog is the question of whether treatment would be safer if given by specialists (partialists) rather than general practitioners (generalists). We wouldn't have the problems with antidepressants and antipsychotics for instance many people seem to think if prescribing was done by psychiatrists rather than GPs. This … [Read more...] about Generalists and Partialists
Venomagnosia
Editorial Note: I was asked to review Peter Kramer's Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants for ISIS. The in print review is HERE. There is a sister post on RxISK - with a better cartoon and where the word Venomagnosia s explained - Come Back When you Have a Medical Degree. This book was very difficult to review. In Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants, Dr. … [Read more...] about Venomagnosia
Surrender
There has been a big delay between posts. This has been primarily about trying to find an image or images for this post - unsuccessfully so far. The trigger to the post came from a piece on Surrendered Wives. The BBC website had the attached piece - strangely as part of their 100 Women series. There are some articles around the place trying to imagine a Surrendered … [Read more...] about Surrender
The First Vaccine Wars
Editorial: This is a final post in the current vaccine series. In 1798 Edward Jenner in Britain demonstrated that vaccination with cowpox was a safer way to confer immunity to smallpox than variolation with smallpox. It quickly spread. In Britain, variolation was banned in favor of vaccination in 1840. In 1853, vaccinations were made compulsory with fines for refusal. … [Read more...] about The First Vaccine Wars
File under Phile: Anecdotes are not Science
Editorial Note: The Post-Truth Rumorology post attracted a comment by Annie that deserves featuring. She cites a really good Daily Mail article in which Melinda Messenger talks about intervening when her daughter is scheduled to have the HPV vaccine. The DM article drew this response from Dr. David Robert Grimes - a physicist at the University of Oxford - "Mothers should … [Read more...] about File under Phile: Anecdotes are not Science