Printed from: https://www.cmf.org.uk/resources/publications/content/?context=issue&id=6090
The Ebola epidemic is now just over one year old; it was officially declared by WHO on 23 March 2014. 1 Since then almost 10,000 lives have been lost and thousands of orphans remain. The UK has been at the forefront of responding to the outbreak in Sierra Leone; hundreds...
We are now well into our year back in Malawi, where we had previously spent almost half our professional lives. I am working as a volunteer, part time, in an AIDS hospital. My wife Helen is giving physio a break and enjoying gardening. We're both having a ball. Isn't that...
Professional competency is an act of worship to God and a duty to our patients. Godliness is an important goal as we let Christ mould our hearts and minds to his will for our lives. But we need to pursue a third priority as we endeavour to model our lives...
As professionals, we want to see patients receiving the highest possible standard of healthcare. In the current environment of rapidly developing knowledge and technology that means, as a minimum, maintaining and improving our skills to ensure the management we offer is the most effective and up to date. In addition,...
This is a difficult time to be a health professional. There are substantial clinical and resource challenges and change seems to be the one constant in our health services. This article examines three questions: What makes these hard times? Why, as Christians, should we seek to influence decision makers? How...
I recall when I committed my live to Christ. I was in third grade. A fellow third grader introduced me to the simple message of salvation, prayed with me and I received Christ as Lord and saviour. At that age and in a church environment, there was little immediate change...
A somewhat negative perception of population ageing in developed and developing societies has become a perennial cliché. In the UK in 2010, ten million people were over 65 years old. Current projections are for 15.5 million by 2040 and around 19 million by 2050. In 2010 there were three million...
There was a time when a Christian doctor working in the UK could reasonably presume a shared worldview with her or his patients. In most areas, most people would identify themselves as 'Christian'. The gospel story was familiar, even if not understood, or personally embraced. Today, competing belief systems, including...
My parents had little time for useless abstractions and philosophical reflection. My Dad was very much a surgeon. There were clear jobs to be done, things to be fixed. My Mum was a no-nonsense pragmatic Scot. As Mum once quellingly said, 'philosophy grows no cabbages'. Perhaps you think likewise. Philosophy...
Society seems to place high value on independence. It's one of the things my patients tell me they want most for their lives. And it is important, to a point, but it's not the whole story. God didn't create us to be alone but in relationship to one another....
Following mission work in India, CMF member William Cutting had a wide-ranging internatio nal career with paediatric trainees, but after retirement in 1998 'the paediatrician metamorphosed into a concerned amateur geriatrician' and these first two volumes of a tetralogy arise from his pastoral care for 'seniors', those over 60. ...
There are times when I wonder what exactly I'm doing as a doctor. If we think the purpose of medicine is to defeat death, the failure rate is 100% – death comes to all of us. What should we understand by health, disease and illness? And what difference does loving...
This is a book of deeply sensitive poems and photographs. David shares his experience during the five years after being diagnosed with incurable cancer until very close to the end of the path. Since publication, David has gone to be with the Lord. Selections from his photographs beautifully illuminate the...
On 7 May the UK goes to the polls for the general election. Whoever assumes power will have a profound influence in shaping public policy in matters which affect us, our families, churches, patients and colleagues. Some claim that politics and religion should not mix – but God is intimately...
Lord Carey versus the 'flat earthers' No doubt it was sharp sub editing. But to author a Daily Mail article labelling opponents of creating three-parent embryos as 'flat earthers' does no credit to Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Later in the same article, he wrote: 'The truth is...
Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill (1) sought to legalise assisted suicide (but not euthanasia) formentally competent adults (aged over 18) with less than six months to live, subject to 'safeguards' under a two doctors' signature model similar to the Abortion Act 1967. The bill had an unopposed second reading in...
Just as the UK debated the need for a new law to prevent abortion based on gender, the Chinese Government announced its latest population statistics. (1)The report contains the admission that gender imbalance among newborns in China is 'the most serious and prolonged' in the world. (2) At the end...
At the end of March, the Nursing and Midwifery Council's (NMC) revised version of The Code: Professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses and midwives came into effect. (1) Most of the changes are good – CMF was able to be very positive about much of the draft Code...
Britain has become the first country in the world to offer controversial 'threeparent' fertility treatments to families who want to avoid passing on mitochondrial diseases to their children. The House of Commons approved the measure by 382–128 and the House of Lords by 280–48 on 3 and 24 February respectively. ...
