That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang. Shakespeare Sonnet 73 These lines came to mind recently when walking by a school playground crowded with young children on lunch-break. Like birds chirping in a tree or bush, they were … [Read more...] about A Turning Point in History
Modern Myths
Truth is Stranger than Fiction
GK Chesterton and then later Mark Twain said that Truth is Stranger than Fiction - it has to be because Fiction has to make Sense. But Fairy Tales are also Stranger than Fiction. Most of what we call Fairy Tales began life as Moral Tales - where the story might be incredible but the Truth lay in the Moral. For a century we have felt these tales when given to children … [Read more...] about Truth is Stranger than Fiction
Swans, Psychopharmacology and Religion
After qualifying in Medicine in Dublin in 1980, I went to Galway on the West Coast of Ireland. Galway was very small compared to Dublin, but I’d heard the university had a new pharmacology professor, Brian Leonard, and interesting things might happen there. The world in 1980, and Ireland in particular, looked very different to what it looks now. There was an Iron Curtain … [Read more...] about Swans, Psychopharmacology and Religion
Cass or Cassandra: Doctors Bearing Gifts
CisMedicine – TransMedicine While The Once and Future Immunity about vaccines for RSV was being drafted last week, the Cass Review on Gender Medicine hit the news headlines. Cass trenchantly critiques gender medicine as it has been practiced in the Western world in the last decade. These 2 items intersect as hopefully this post will make clear. Trenchant though it was, the … [Read more...] about Cass or Cassandra: Doctors Bearing Gifts
Zen and the Art of Psychopharmacology
This post outlines an article that will appear in the next issue of Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry - Zen and the Art of MoodCycle Maintenance - borrowing from the title of a semi-philosophical book with Zen and MotorCyles in its title that was well-known when some of us were young. The full article with references and footnotes will be published imminently. It's … [Read more...] about Zen and the Art of Psychopharmacology
The Great Silence and Moral Injury
Assuming things around 1998 in the graph below were what most of us would have figured until recently was what normal should look like – by that I mean as we might have expected things to be – there has been a dramatic change since 1998. See Conspiracy of Silence. No one, until recently, would have expected teens to be collecting disability payments and the rate of disability … [Read more...] about The Great Silence and Moral Injury
In Secula Seculorum
This post is twinned with No Room at the Inn. In Secula Seculorum are Latin words that resonate for anyone of a certain age with a Catholic background. Intoned in a sonorous and rhythmic way at ceremonies, they conjured up the sacred and holy. Looked at rather than listened to, they conjure up the opposite - secularism. The words mean forever and ever. Worlds … [Read more...] about In Secula Seculorum
Psychotropic Drug Follies
This post links to Experts by Experience and Withdrawal, PSSD and Cholinergic Drugs on RxISK and The Marketing of Anticholinergic Maleficence here last week along a just published article The Past Present and Future which describes a medical 'episode' that gives you an insight on how the system 'works' and should leave you skeptical amost almost anything you might hear about … [Read more...] about Psychotropic Drug Follies
Jen and the Genestalk
Mystery in the Moonlight © Nina Otulakowski March 2023 As she was about to leave the house, Jen’s mother asked her if she was on her way to get vaccinated. Mother, she said, that’s like asking me to take the cow to the market. It’s a bit twentieth century, maybe even nineteenth. You get vaccinia virus from cows. I’m heading off to meet Bri and Suzanna for the latest gene … [Read more...] about Jen and the Genestalk
Are Women Better at Everything?
I was born in a generation where it was thought women couldn’t drive cars, write fiction, compose music, compete at sports, or should be let work after marriage. Women were emotional, intuitive, erratic but not really capable of full rationality. Ireland in the 1950s may have been a few years behind other parts of Europe on these issues, but it has a prior history of women … [Read more...] about Are Women Better at Everything?