Ventilators

Wednesday

Nick Tyrone

Starmer’s absurd reaction to the Dyson lobbying ‘scandal’

In the midst of the David Cameron-Greensill lobbying scandal — a gift to the Labour party if ever there was one — Keir Starmer’s frontbench have managed to overshoot the mark. Talking up what she clearly hoped will be another storm for the government to weather, shadow business minister Lucy Powell had some strong words: It stinks, really, that a billionaire businessman can text the Prime Minister and get an immediate response and apparently an immediate change in policy. It seems like the country only works for people who are rich enough or influential enough and, frankly, donors to the Tory party, who have the personal mobile number of the

Saturday

Dr Matt Strauss

The underground doctors’ movement questioning the use of ventilators

In the 1780s, medical authorities largely agreed: insufflation of the rectum with tobacco smoke was the best treatment for near-drowning. Therefore, the Royal Humane Society lined the banks of the river Thames with tobacco smoke enema kits and rewarded heroic members of the public who used them to ‘save’ drowning victims. It’s easy to laugh at their efforts. With our modern insistence on evidence-based medicine, we would never significantly invest in medical infrastructure that has not been proven beneficial by a randomised control trial. Except of course we have, and we continue to do so. No area of medicine is immune to these lapses. But it is my own specialty