blogs

Putting faith in global healthcare
I have long argued on this blog that there needs to be a greater engagement with faith based…

The BMA: A trade union with integrity?
Can the British Medical Association (BMA) be trusted to ‘maintain the honour and interests of the medical…

Abortion and preterm births: what women need to know but are not told
Prematurity - a birth prior to 37 weeks gestational age – has recently been described as: ‘the…

Candour in the NHS: Speaking the truth in love?
We would all want a good degree of honesty from anyone caring for us or treating us for a medical condition. …

Nurses caught up in immigration battle
The annual congress of the Royal College of Nursing opened on Sunday, and it began with a warning. …

Morning-after pill is now available to all girls UNDER the age of consent
News that the morning-after pill, ellaOne (which can be effective up to five days after sex), is now…

Elisabeth Elliot enters ‘the gates of splendor’
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” ― Jim…

How safe is the school cancer vaccination for young girls?
New reports (including on the front page of the Independent) are adding to the evolving story…

The new ethical frontier: DIY eugenics
The single most controversial development in biology in 2015 is a relatively cheap, easily manipulated…

Scottish Assisted Suicide Bill gets short shrift from MSPs
Patrick Harvie’s Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill has been defeated today in a free vote by 82 votes…

Thirteen ‘solutions’ to mitochondrial disease assessed
Mitochondrial disorders are passed on through a mother’s mitochondrial DNA. They are progressive…
Caring for your mind during lockdown
When Boris Johnson announced a UK-wide lockdown, my immediate response was fear and dread. Many people are currently living in fear of catching Covid-19, and understandably so. However, for some of us, this virus may present a greater risk to our mental health than it does to our physical well-being. I find myself in this […]
Sidelined? Or waiting for God’s time to serve?
How Life Changes Four and a half weeks ago, I left my desk at a busy teaching hospital to start a semi-enforced break of five weeks between technical retirement and return to work in early April. Fortunately, I didn’t plan a cruise or world tour! However, a visit to a Christian hospital with a CMF […]
Facing coronavirus (COVID-19): the practicalities of critical illness and the reality of our mortality
Introduction In a manner not seen in the United Kingdom since World War Two, the COVID-19 crisis has brought death and dying – society’s greatest taboo – to centre stage. Whether we would like to admit it or not, even as Christians, we find this a very hard topic to discuss, especially with our closest […]
Coronavirus emergency measures remove safeguards around ‘home abortions’
Under the guise of the coronavirus lockdown, abortion campaigners have taken the opportunity to lobby the UK Government to substantially change the rules around abortion pills, something they have wanted to do for years, as this blog explains. This week, they have been successful in their campaign. Now women will be able to take two powerful […]
The ethics of emergencies must not become policy for peacetime
One of the questions proponents of abortion like to pose to their opponents runs like this: If you were in a hospital that was burning down, would you save a tray full of frozen embryos or a single child? This is supposed to prove that we pro-lifers don’t really believe that an embryo is human, […]
Ten things to pray for Christian healthcare workers
This morning I read a news article entitled ‘What am I still allowed to do?’ It outlined the new measures which the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson announced to the nation on Monday evening, explaining what this new UK-wide lockdown means for each of us and when we can leave the house. However, whilst we are […]
Denying conscience – the Canadian experiment
Recent reports from Canada reveal a worrying trend of doctors being pressurised and bullied into participating in Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD, the Canadian euthanasia programme). This is not only a worrying development in itself but one that follows almost inevitably from the steady erosion of the freedom of conscience in Canadian law around euthanasia […]
Compassion and Coronavirus: Where is God?
You may have read about the consultant anaesthetist, who has moved into a caravan to allow him to keep treating COVID-19 patients whilst protecting his son, just three years old, who is undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma. The chemotherapy will result in his son’s immune system being suppressed and means COVID-19 is a significant threat to […]
Washing feet
John 13: 1-20 Jesus is approaching the climax of his life. All his acts of service were about to be culminated and summated in his willing sacrifice on the cross. And it is all motivated by agape love – the love that gives. ‘Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to […]
Leadership in pandemics – six principles to guide us
The COVID19 epidemic has thrown nations into complete chaos. Fear and panic have gripped the world. Many nations are struggling with the impact of large numbers of people falling ill and increasing numbers of new infections. Many nations are preparing for this eventuality, but struggling, not knowing what they should be doing since the current […]
Coronavirus and the call to risk
It’s the early hours of the morning, and I’m standing in a cholera camp looking at the scene around me. There are people everywhere – on beds, on benches, on the floor, even lying in wheelbarrows. Sunken eyes look up at me as I look at the line of IV drips and giving sets attached […]
Christianity in a time of plague
Epidemic infections were a source of terror in the ancient world. They would sweep into the cities of the Roman Empire, causing devastation. The Plague of Cyprian was a pandemic that afflicted the Roman Empire from about AD 249 to 262. From 250 to 262, at the height of the outbreak, 5,000 people a day […]