Spotlight on the Suicides: The Hospital DoctorsThis post continues the Spotlight on the Suicides series. There were 8 named people in Stephen O’Neill’s medical record, or who made entries in the record between the time of first admission and his death. He appears to have told most of them that in his view the sertraline he had been put on and […]
Spotlight on the Suicides: The Family DoctorContinuing the Spotlight on the Suicides Series I have largely avoided naming names and will continue to avoid putting names in the frame but Stephen’s family doctor’s name, Dr Brannigan, is already in the public domain, and I’ve made it clear that the coroner thought highly of him and the whole point behind these posts […]
Spotlight on the Suicides: The CoronerThis continues the Spotlight on Suicides Series – The photograph is of Patrick McGurgan – the coroner. Mr McGurgan appeared to be a decent man. He treated everyone with courtesy and appeared to be listening. His conclusions at the end of the inquest provoked a correspondence from me that will be posted later in this […]
Spotlight on the Suicides: OvertureThis is part 2 of Spotlight on the Suicides. In February 2017, I received the email below. The email address gave no hint of where it came from – it could have been any English speaking country but the word Trust in the second and fourth paragraphs suggested England. The details seemed clear enough for […]
Spotlight on the Suicides in Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland has been at the centre of European, even world politics, over the last three years, as a result of a referendum in Britain that was held with little, if any, thought of the possible consequences for Ireland. If an alien zooming towards Earth burst through the atmosphere and was faced with the Western […]
Women, Men and DrugsI’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 […]
Saint Candida’s DayThis 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 […]
329 Deja Vu; We’re all Northern Irish nowStudy 329 is the most famous clinical trial of all time – see Study329.org. The only trial with two diametrically competing versions of what happened in print at the same time. 329 (March 29) was the date Britain was supposed to leave the European Union – but didn’t – with close to GUBU consequences. And […]
Reckless MP causes BrexitEditorial 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 – […]
Obama kills millions of patientsThis 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 […]
Osama bin Laden saves millions of livesEditorial 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 […]
Decernimus Ergo Summus: Citizen’s AssembliesRecap When it comes to assessing the benefits of drugs randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are over-rated, rarely if ever objective, and easily gamed. If you don’t know what you are doing to begin with, RCTs won’t find an answer and in practice will make the situation worse. The operationalism of RCTs helped tee up a […]
Something Happened: Neo-MedicalismThis continues a Something Happened Series, A Western moral order fractured between Luther’s nailing of his Credo Ergo Sum, I believe therefore I am, to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517, and Descartes’ Cogito Ergo Sum, I reason therefore I am, in 1649 the year of Charles I’s decapitation. Justice Justice and benevolence were […]
Something happened to ScienceEditorial: 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 […]
Something Happened – to Science and to UsIn 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: Storm in a D CupOrdinarily 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 […]
Kramer v KramerEditorial 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 […]
What Happened?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 […]
329: A Study in What?Editorial Note: This post will be an easy and obvious read if you’re Irish. If you’re not, with Google or whatever it should be accessible and indeed the little bit of extra effort may make it a more rewarding read. There is a warning below in respect of one item you might choose to Google. […]
Something Stupid This Way ComesThe 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 […]
All the Better for the FishesJose 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 […]
DH 2 DHJanuary 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 […]
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, SurveillorThe 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 […]
The Bridgend Suicide MysteryDead 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 […]
Suicide: Are Old Media or New Media to Blame?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 […]
Rest in DissentFifty 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 […]
Fake Science, Fake Religion or Fake What?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 […]
Making Medicines Safer for All of USEditorial Note: Aberystwyth on the West Coast of Wales is one of the best places in the world to see starlings murmurate. Clive King from the Computer Science Department there also organises TedX talks and on November 24 convened a panel of speakers to talk about murmurating swallows, ambivalent motherhood and making medicines […]
SimonyBefore Google the Bible could be pretty confusing. Peter seemed to be a bedrock, a fixed point in the New Testament narrative. Your name will be Peter which means Rock. This of course means that he had another name before being renamed. Looks like it was Simon. So at various points we have references to […]
A strong and independent research community to the benefit of… patients.Seven weeks ago in the wake of Peter Gøtzsche’s dismissal by the Rigshospitalitet, I wrote to Ellen Trane Nørby the Danish Minister for Health. The letter is HERE. She replied on December 11 – See HERE. The response below was sent yesterday, along with the hard copies noted and link to the Welsh Senate proceedings. December 17th […]
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