
blogs


Marie Stopes International: carrying out unsafe abortions in the UK and across the globe, using taxpayer millions
For the past five years, the charity Marie Stopes International (MSI) has been given £163 million in…

Seeing the Person behind the disability
Late in June, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) abolished the role of Disability Commissioner.…

Why the rush to change blood donation deferral policies for commercial sex workers & men who have sex with men?
Commercial sex workers and men who have sex with men (MSM) in Britain and Scotland are to be allowed…

College climbs down over ban on Christian doctors and nurses training in sexual and reproductive health
Doctors and nurses wishing to practise in sexual and reproductive health have been granted more liberty…

DNA editing – a significant advance but many questions remained unanswered
You can see my Sky News interview on this story here.
Scientists have, for the first time shown that…

Ideology or Evidence (part two)? The battle over abortion statistics
Having blogged about the triumph of ideology over evidence in relation to the campaign in England, Scotland…

Ideology or evidence? The battle over presumed consent to organ donation
The debate about changing the law on organ donation is one of a number of controversial issues…

Charlie Gard: Emotion has trumped trust in today’s society, but parents and professionals can work together
The tragic case of Charlie Gard, and the desperate efforts of his parents Connie Yates and Chris…

Why Boots chemist should not have capitulated to pressure from BPAS over emergency contraception
Over the weekend I waded into the debate on whether Boots should reduce the price of the so-called ‘morning-after…

Family planning – ‘summit of a mess’
Last week’s London Family Planning Summit was, on the surface, a ‘successful’ follow up to the…

The Conway Case – a change in the law to allow assisted suicide is dangerous and unnecessary
A 67-year-old Shropshire man with motor neurone disease (MND) is seeking to overturn the law banning…
Sex and Relationship Education: should it be compulsory in schools or not?
The Government has just announced major changes to Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in all schools, from age four. Currently SRE is compulsory in council-maintained secondary schools but not Academies, free schools or primary schools, although in reality, most academies and free schools do provide SRE lessons. The pressure on the Government to make changes […]
Regulator’s proposal to remove pharmacists’ conscience rights is unethical, unnecessary and quite possibly illegal
Should pharmacists be forced to dispense drugs for what they consider to be unethical practices – like emergency contraception, gender reassignment, abortion and assisted suicide? Or should they have the right to exercise freedom of conscience by either referring to a colleague or opting out? The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), the independent British regulator for […]
Surrogacy – good rulings from Europe put the UK out on a limb
The disentangling of the UK from the European Union will inevitably, over time, put us more and more out of sync with the rest of Europe. Yet in some matters, we are already starkly out of sync, and not in a good way for the UK. Take surrogacy. Two significant new developments this year in […]
The age-old question: Science and political interests in the debate over abortion
Political agendas hiding behind science are nothing new. A particularly famous episode occurred in the 1950s, where tobacco companies tried to instil doubt in scientific reports that found correlations between smoking and bad health by funding research of their own. Yet, the idea that science can be used as a vehicle for political interests has […]
Global Health – challenges for the coming year
2016 may have got a bad press in some parts of the media, but step back from the Anglophone world and the obsession with celebrity deaths and political upheavals in the West, and you get a different picture. The last year has seen many developments in global health, and in just a few short weeks […]
Beginning of Life issues in 2017: what will we be talking about this year?
2017 will be another busy and challenging year on beginning of life issues Abortion October 2017 marks the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act. Throughout the year this significant anniversary will generate media publicity, events, stories from women and will fire up campaigns by those who want to see the laws tightened up (or […]
Bullying and NHS Culture
It seems hard to credit that an organisation whose primary focus is the care of the sick, disabled and the vulnerable should have an appalling reputation for bullying and intimidation of staff. However in survey after survey of NHS staff at least one quarter and up to one third of all those who respond say […]
Despite the marketing, egg freezing is not all it’s cracked up to be
IVF has become an almost routine procedure since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978. So much so that women are increasingly delaying childbirth for various reasons, often with an assumption that IVF will be a back up in case of infertility. Of course for many couples IVF can provide a desperately wanted child. It […]
Christmas: The miracle of the incarnation
Many of our colleagues are sceptical of the miraculous elements in the life of Jesus Christ: the virgin birth, the healing miracles and the resurrection. They ‘know’ as health professionals that such things are medically impossible. But the real miracle, on which all rests, and which we celebrate at Christmas, is actually the incarnation, the […]
Training community health workers for the future of South Sudan
The work being done globally by Christian doctors, nurses and other health professionals seldom makes the headlines. Yet quietly but significantly, Christians are making a real contribution to global health needs. To recognise this contribution that our international umbrella body, the International Christian Medical and Dental Association (ICMDA) makes its annual Dignity and Right to […]
How do we respond to Aleppo?
The news coming out of the Syrian city of Aleppo in the last few months has been horrific and heart-breaking. Not least because the whole world seems impotent to stop the killing and destruction. But this is not a new siege, just the closing stages of a long, bitter battle by the Syrian regime to […]
The case of Sarah Kuteh: what does it tell us about evangelism and spiritual care?
Another story of a nurse sacked for praying with patients and talking about Jesus has hit the headlines in the last few days. It does seem to be a recurring theme! The facts of the case are a bit sketchy. Sarah Kuteh, who has 15 years of nursing experience, was dismissed by her employers, the […]