Difficult facts can be conveyed in a sensitive, non-judgemental and compassionate manner; indeed, this describes the daily practise of medicine. When obesity rears its head, however, a significant number of my colleagues in the health professions display a cognitive dissonance and determination to deprive patients of the unvarnished facts that they would not dare hide
I love the series Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister for many reasons, among them the timeless, elegant dialogue that can be applied to today’s politics. Hearing the pledge emanating from Number 10 that very soon the UK will enjoy a ‘seven-day a week GP service’, conveniently devoid of any details as to how that service
As a gynaecologist, I was appalled to read this story about a supposedly ‘groundbreaking’ treatment to stop premature births in the Mail (I read it on the online Mail site but in fact the culprit is The Mail on Sunday). Let me quote from it before telling you what it gets utterly wrong. Note my emphases
GPs are the very personification of the description ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. Following so-called ‘specialist’ training, they emerge as the ultimate generalists, requiring additional input to manage any kind of medical complication, lacking the in-depth knowledge and experience required to manage comprehensively many of the common medical conditions. And they’re a drain on the
For over 30 years, dietary fat has been seen as a major cause of heart attacks, strokes and cancer. This has been a health catastrophe. Ancel Keys’s ‘Seven Countries’ study, first published in 1970, brought about the widespread idea that we should all eat a low-fat, high-carb diet for optimal health. Had Keys used the
Real disability is humbling for those who have to live with it and those who care for the disabled. A true disability — degenerative neurological disease, for instance — involves the equivalent of a daily war to live in the way that most of us take for granted. We shouldn’t mock the truly disabled by
I will start by publicly apologising to Professor Meirion Thomas; in a moment of folly, I erroneously signed a petition decrying his alleged ‘disrespect’ of colleagues, in the wake of one of his articles in the Daily Mail. In my defence, my newborn was crying at the time and I was sleep deprived. Now, however,
After the Bristol Heart Scandal in the 1990’s, the speciality of cardiac surgery rose to the occasion, leading the way in publishing individual surgeon’s mortality figures and self-audit, which made it perhaps the most transparent speciality in the UK, and thus consolidating its long-held position as a world leader in the training of surgeons and
The recent case reported in the press of a 17 year old mother who deliberately binge drank alcohol during her pregnancy, resulting in a baby with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) and who now stands accused of administering a ‘noxious substance’ to the baby and criminal negligence, represents the beginning of what may subsequently morph into
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_15082013.m4a” title=”Andrew Haldenby and Sean Worth join Sebastian Payne to discuss NHS reforms.”] Listen [/audioplayer] GPs enjoy the salary of bankers, regularly pulling in £100,000 for a five-day week, with no on-call or weekend duties and a lovely taxpayer-funded holiday every year. I know this because it says so in the papers, so it
The successful transplantation of a uterus represents the last major surgical goal in the field of reproductive gynaecology. This feat has recently been achieved by a team at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The 36-year-old patient was born with a condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) Syndrome. The condition occurs in one out of every 4,000
According to a new paper published in the journal Cancer Research women taking combined oral contraceptive pills (COCP) have a 50 per cent increased risk of developing breast cancer. Frightening stuff – or is it? Oral contraceptive pills have many benefits; they provide excellent contraception, decrease pain and bleeding during periods, they can help towards restoration of normalisation
According to the World Health Organisation’s latest report into antibiotic resistance we are facing a ‘problem so serious that it threatens the achievements of modern medicine… A post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can kill, far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the 21st century.’ Bloody frightening
