A Darkness the Light cannot Master A priming note for Secular and all non-Xtian readers - what Xtians call the New Testament has 4 Gospels. Three open with variations on what most folk from Hollywood to the Vatican would view as the conventional Xmas Nativity story – cold time of year, manger, donkeys, star. The fourth, the Gospel according to John, is radically different. … [Read more...] about The Darkness and the Light
Neoliberalism
Challenging My Media to Disclose
At the end of most articles in the Guardian newspaper you find this: This is what we’re up against. Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see. Lobby groups with opaque funding who are determined to undermine facts about the climate emergency and established science. Authoritarian states with no regard for the … [Read more...] about Challenging My Media to Disclose
Truth, Trust and Health
Geoff Wilson invited me to give this lecture in Lexington Kentucky at a Medicating Normal meeting in May to a group of healthcare professionals. Don Marks gave me the chance to repeat it a few days later at Kean University's Psychology Department. Both groups were also asked to comment on Challenging My Doctor to Disclose. Bill James helped produce this Truth Trust Health … [Read more...] about Truth, Trust and Health
Damsels Dying from Distress or Dysphoria?
This post, which opens with a photo of Noelia Voigt navigates between last week's Cass and Cassandra, which features Distressed Damsels and Dudes, and RxISK's post this week - Is Your Treatment Making you Suicidal, which features Dysphoric Damsels and Dudes - dying from drug induced dysphoria. Noelia was until this week Miss USA 2023. She has stepped down from the post, … [Read more...] about Damsels Dying from Distress or Dysphoria?
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
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
It’s Health’s Illusions I Recall
There is a core concept shaping the ‘market’ in health, the concept of an assay. Few doctors or patients understand it. This article explains what assays are, how they entered healthcare and the consequences of failing to grasp the role they play. This post by Harriet Vogt and David Healy is an illustrated version of a peer-reviewed citable academic article Randomized … [Read more...] about It’s Health’s Illusions I Recall
Efficiency is not the Supreme Virtue
I was staying in Aubervilliers last November for a “Whistleblowers” Lanceurs d’Alerte conference. Aubervilliers is in the North-East of Paris – not one of the tourist areas. Some French friends suggested the reason Paris was hosting the Olympics was because it offered the authorities an opportunity to flatten that part of the city and regenerate it – clearing out the … [Read more...] about Efficiency is not the Supreme Virtue
TAIL Wags God – Technology and Morality
AiDA - Assistance in Dying Altruistically - featured in Liberty Equality and Fertility. Here's AIDA's picture. It likely depends on your mood as you look at the picture. She might make an AiDA option look attractive or add to its horror. Some people, particularly mothers, can be extraordinarily altruistic, and might think they could sacrifice themselves for the good of their … [Read more...] about TAIL Wags God – Technology and Morality
Silent Health
This post links to last week's Silencing Safety and Women and Children First and this week's Lonesome Heroines on RxISK. For decades, Jack Noble has been an inspiration for anyone in my and I'm sure other circles, who is concerned about the way medicine is going and the influence of pharma. He's a straight-talking Bostonian, now living in Texas, who can't easily be … [Read more...] about Silent Health