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For anyone bereft since Breaking Bad came to an end, this is a second installment in The Persecution of Heretics Murder Mystery series. Episode one can be seen here. The harassment of healthcare staff has been a backburner in British news recently. There have been a series of pieces in the Daily Mail, usually to the forefront of everything in healthcare, and the BMJ. A … [Read more...] about Persecution of Vulnerable Adults: POVA

Editorial Note: This is the start of a series that will likely run through to the End of the Year. For those of you who like Murder Mysteries, this is one. Please comment, speculate and help put a new source of harassment and intimidation properly on the map. This post accompanies a talk I gave at the Hay on Wye HowTheLightGetsIn Festival this May, called The Persecution … [Read more...] about The Persecution of Heretics

Editorial Note: This is the last in the Doctor Munchausen series. A new strand on the Persecution of Heretics will start soon. The image is Paul Klee's drawing for the Dance of the Grieving Child. Being Irish makes it possible to tackle certain things - or now possible. The question of the Catholic Church for instance and its handling of children, whether their abuse at the … [Read more...] about Doctor Munchausen: Hear No, See No – What?

Editorial Note: This piece was first submitted to the Journal of Mental Health in 1997 and two other journals later that year - with Marie Savage and Phil Thomas as co-authors. The reviewers were affronted - one figured mental health was likely no worse than the rest of medicine. Unable to find a home, it migrated to become a chapter in the third edition of Psychiatric Drugs … [Read more...] about Dr Munchausen: Pharmacophile

Editorial Note: This is the sixth in a Dr Munchausen series of posts. It was originally going to be entitled 'Dr Munchausen joins your local Hospital Board'. Crash & Holocaust denialism In JG Ballard's novel Crash, covered in the last post, we slip from the solid world in which we think we move to a dreamworld - the dreamworld in which we are now living. In this … [Read more...] about Doctor Munchausen: Judge & Jury

Editorial Note: This is the fifth in a series of Doctor Munchausen posts that include: Dr Munchausen, I presume Dying for a Cure Dear Luise Father Munchausen They followed a Sense about Science series of posts that included: Sense about Science: Follow the Rhetoric Sense about Science: First Admit no Harm Sense about Science: Follow the Lawsuit … [Read more...] about Doctor Munchausen and Sense About Science

Editorial Note: This is the fourth of seven Doctor Munchausen posts - Doctor Munchausen, I presume, Dying for a Cure, Dear Louise and the forthcoming Doctor Munchausen as a Sense about Science Trustee, and Doctor Munchausen Joins your local Hospital Board. I’ve had some criticism of the recent Doctor Munchausen posts. They’re not fair on doctors. Many people have told me of … [Read more...] about Father Munchausen, I Presume!

Editorial Note: This is a third post in the six post Doctor Munchausen series. See Doctor Munchausen, I Presume and Dying for a Cure. A variation on this post first featured on RxISK.org some months ago. Dear Luise by Dorrit Cato Christensen is one of most extraordinary books about healthcare ever written. Medical books are usually about great discoveries, great endurance, … [Read more...] about Doctor Munchausen: Dear Luise

Editorial Note: This is the second in a Doctor Munchausen series of posts - meditations on the fact that medicine is likely the place where the greatest amount of abuse on earth happens - but no-one notices and no-one intervenes. The post below comes from the foreword to Dying for a Cure, Rebekah Beddoe's book on what happened her when she fell into the clutches of a doctor. … [Read more...] about Doctor Munchausen: Dying for a Cure

Editorial note: As Britain descends into an orgy of handwringing about the abuse of vulnerable people, this is the first of several posts to tackle the issue. In 2000 when I gave a lecture on Psychopharmacology and the Government of the Self at the invitation of the University of Toronto, I ran into a problem. In the public domain our shared difficulties were because of this … [Read more...] about Doctor Munchausen I Presume!