David’s blog
Copyright © Data Based Medicine Americas Ltd.
There is no Sanity ClausMid-morning, on Tuesday September 24 2019, Britain was gripped. Lots of people stopped what they were doing and turned their TVs or computers to live feed from the Supreme Court. Spider Woman (Brenda Hale) was taking on the Joker (Boris Johnson). She punched him in the nose. The Joker had suspended Parliament at a critical […]
The NICE before ChristmasIn Orders from Nowhere, Vaughan Gething suggested writing to Andrew Dillon of NICE. The correspondence had an Xmas Eve denouement – hence the title. It seems everybody figures NICE hold all the answers. The doctors who treated Stephen O’Neill claimed to be keeping to NICE Guidelines and only using drugs licensed by MHRA. They also […]
Orders from Nowhere that KillIn The Death of Stephen O’Neill I suggested his doctors, like soldiers in an army, simply by dint of following orders were capable of doing horrific things. At his inquest, the doctors from the Bluestone unit in Craigavon, where Stephen had gone for help, issued this astonishing statement. Southern Trust Health and Social Care Trust […]
I Recognise these ConstraintsThe Perfect Killing Machine claims people in medicine’s highest echelons recognise what killed Stephen O’Neill but figure there’s little they can do about it. This letter from Frank Atherton is the most extraordinary I’ve received from Government. To see why you need to page down to the letter to which he is responding, a letter […]
The Perfect Killing MachineSomewhat like a lobster being slowly boiled as opposed to one dropped straight into boiling water, we have learned to co-exist with and ignore a Perfect Killing Machine in our midst which takes far more lives than the Covid pandemic – without it featuring anywhere in the news. This is a second post about Stephen […]
The Death of Stephen O’Neill and YouThere will be a sequence of 7 weekly posts here about Stephen O’Neill and You that will also feature on Stephen’s Voice Facebook page. This and next week’s post feature videos about why everyone should help bring some good from Stephen O’Neill’s death – not just because the same could easily happen you but also […]
Repetition Compulsion to the Death or Beyond?This post is all about a marvellous article by Arthur Schafer on Conflict of Interest – or something like that. See below. But first some background. In the Last Millennium Over three decades ago, Toronto and Thalassemia came together in what became one of the most celebrated bioethical cases of any millennium that initially pitched […]
Does My Bias Look Big in This?Big Bias (video here) may be the most important lecture I have ever given. Its not easy. The bottom line is that Clinical Trials don’t work. For everyone working in health (medical Catholics), this is a bit like saying the Pope is not infallible. We have a great problem with this, partly because our response […]
Journalists and DoctorsThe image is of legendary journalist Bill Haddad who did more to grapple with pharmaceutical corruption than anyone else. The opening lines of A Pill for Neoliberalism, as delivered, about the job of doctors and journalists being very similar, were not part of the transcript in last week’s post. The remarks came to me as […]
RxISK Newsletter re Samizdat LaunchRxISK has just launched a writer’s co-operative – Samizdat-Health and Samizdat House – for non-fiction and fiction publications falling outside the boundaries of the sanctioned conversation on issues thrown up by health. Launching a new set of imprints like this has become necessary, because publishing about treatment-related difficulties has become increasingly problematic in a risk-averse […]
Sex Antidepressants and Neo-LiberalismThis is the French translation of what was said at a lecture in Grenoble on October 14th and in the Lyon the following day. The numbers below should correspond closely with the slides. The english is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFgTFXXChi0&pbjreload=10 1/ Sur cette radiographie, vous voyez une épaule cassée. Je suis tombé dans la douche un vendredi […]
The Decapitation of Care: The Healthcare ManifestoSamizdat has just launched The Decapitation of Care on Amazon — in English (print and kindle) and La santé décapitée in French (kindle) with French print in a few days time and El Fin Del Cuidado; Una breve historia del auge y caída de la atención médica in Spanish both print and kindle very soon after. […]
Neo-culturalismThis post first appeared on Samizdat Health. Anyone who wants early notifications of things appearing there should follow @SamizdatHealth on Twitter and the Samizdat Health Facebook page. Members of Samizdat will initially include anyone contributing material in book or other art form but we will look to develop a Friends of Samizdat group also. Last […]
Samizdat HealthEditorial Note: This post first featured on Samizdat Health, which later this month will publish The Decapitation of Care. Samizdat Health – a writer’s co-operative that has taken shape in responses to changes in health and in publishing – will be borne this month. This post copies the feature on SamizdatHealth.org The original Samizdat was […]
‘Tis the Season to RebelIn 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, […]
Spotlight on the Suicides: Behind the ScenesFollowing their Spotlight on the Troubles series, BBC ran an astonishing Behind the Scenes program that must have left even those who thought they knew what happened in the Northern Irish Troubles doubt that they really knew what was going on. The revelations turned the Troubles into a real life version of John Le Carre’s […]
Spotlight on the Suicides: Women and Knights (?)I had no reply to the letter sent in September featured in last week’s post – Spotlight on the Politicians. Michelle O’Neill had a nothing response to a letter she sent the Northern Ireland Office. Vaughn Gething’s office (Wales Health Minister), when asked, acknowledged receipt of the letter but figured they had only been sent […]
Spotlight on the Suicides: The PoliticiansThis Continues the Spotlight on the Suicides series. Astonished by the conclusion of Stephen O’Neill’s inquest, I wrote to Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, copied to the Ministers of Health in Ireland, Simon Harris, in Wales Vaughan Gething, and in England Matt Hancock, along with the Danish MEP, Margrete Auken, the European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly […]
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 […]
Copyright © Data Based Medicine Americas Ltd.