David’s blog

In the Beginning The conventional story is that Good created the world but that at some point after the Creation a group of Rebel Angels figured they could do a better job of running the show.  They took on the Almighty and lost – we are told. You can view Lucifer, Beelzebub or the Satan, […]

I’ve been a fan of Placido Domingo for 40 years or more.  His role alongside Teresa Stratas in Zeffirelli’s La Traviata (if its emotion you want – one of the greatest movies ever made) can still bring tears to my eyes.  I always liked his voice more than Pavarotti’s, Carreras, or others – and he […]

This is the final post in the Bruce Willis series – see Osama, Obama and Reckless.  It’s the point behind the series.  And it comes on the 28th anniversary of the original event. Train Tracks Its 1991.  Two trains are heading toward each other on the same piece of track.  One has a shiny badge […]

Editorial Note: The image featuring Samantha Cameron and her husband, David, comes from the front cover of Private Eye, a British satirical magazine, who might have thought twice about adding to the pressure on Cameron if they had known what was going to happen next.  This is the third in a Bruce Willis series – […]

This post continues a series of Bruce Willis unintended consequences posts, of which there will be two more.  There is a degree of truth in all of them. As outlined in last week’s Osama Saves Millions, Yusuf Hamied stepped in at a critical point in the unfolding global AIDS story and in offering Triple Therapy […]

Editorial Note: Think of this as a Bruce Willis set of posts. I’m no BW fan.  Nor a fan of the nuclear bomb. Chances are neither were the makers of the movie Armageddon.  But someone probably got a thrill out of forcing a bunch of people who hate BW and were members of CND cheering […]

Editorial: One of my regular readers dropped me an email after the last post saying that the Montelukast Withdrawal Syndrome post on RxISK was wonderful but Something Happened on the same day was incomprehensible.  The title was a give-away.  Something Happened but it doesn’t seem to me that anyone knows quite what.  Here’s another take […]

In March 2015, the cover of National Geographic featured a picture of the moon-landing with a title The War on Science and a strapline: climate change does not exist; evolution never happened; the moon landing was fake; vaccination can lead to autism; genetically modified food is evil.  See Here. Even before elections in Europe and […]

Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants  Peter Kramer 2016 This book was very difficult to review. In Ordinarily Well, Dr. Peter Kramer makes two arguments that I agree with. One is that clinical observation—the interaction by which a medical professional learns about a patient—counts for something. The other is that clinical trials, or evidence-based medicine […]

Editorial Note:  Kramer v Kramer had been a hit movie a decade earlier.  Listening to Prozac offered a chance to have a review called Kramer v Kramer but the journal – Psychological Medicine – was not amused and ditched the title. Here’e the review written at the same time as the Porter and others. In […]

In the early to mid 1990s something happened.  The view that many social commentators and academics offer is that neo-liberalism swept into town, dissolved society and turned us all into individuals.  This is a non-explanation in that no-one can spell out what neo-liberalism is – so the explanation boils down to something happened. The something […]