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…
Defeat for pro-euthanasia lobby as Massachusetts rejects assisted suicide on ballot
The US state of Massachusetts voted 51%-49% in a referendum last night to reject the legalisation of assisted suicide. The final vote was 1,516,584 to 1,453,742, a margin of over 62,000. The proponents of the change conceded defeat after only 93% of votes had been counted when the margin was 38,000 votes (see statement here). […]
Lessons in Language
I was intrigued to read the following short tweet a couple of weeks ago by the pro-abortion organisation, ‘Education for Choice’, during the recent discussion in the media on reducing the legal time limits for abortion. This tweet was aimed at journalists: ‘Journos, can we stop saying ‘risk to the mother’s health when talking about […]
Peter Singer backs abortion for curbing population growth
Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher and currently Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He is former editor of the Bioethics journal and one of the most influential thinkers in bioethics today. Singer espouses utilitarianism, a system of ethics that seeks to minimize suffering and maximize wellbeing. The New Yorker has called him ‘the […]
School contraceptive jabs to 13 year-olds without parental consent – a dangerous and ill-informed strategy
School nurses have given implants or jabs to girls aged between 13 and 16 more than 900 times in the past two years, a survey by The Daily Telegraph has found. Girls aged 13 have been given contraceptive jabs and implants on more than 20 occasions. A further 7,400 girls aged 15 and under have […]
Government ministers and MPs wade in on Liverpool Care Pathway
The controversial Liverpool care pathway (LCP), a framework used to manage patients who are imminently dying, has not unexpectedly now come to the attention of government ministers and MPs. Earlier this year, the Daily Mail newspaper claimed in a headline that the NHS was killing off 130,000 patients a year via the LCP. On the […]
The demographic time bomb is most marked in Japan
The demographic time bomb – whereby the elderly population assumes a greater and greater proportion of the total population – is no more marked than in Japan. Falling birth rates (as a result of abortion, contraception and delaying childbirth) and increasing longevity as a result of better medical care have created this situation. If we […]
Ten questions you never hear asked on the media
I was on the Radio Four Today programme last week debating Lord Falconer (listen here for Radio Four and here for Radio Five Live and ) on whether or not assisted suicide should be legalised in the light of ten years of British people going to the Dignitas facility in Switzerland to end their lives. […]
Specialists in Palliative Medicine need to act swiftly to respond to these five key concerns about the LCP
Yesterday I mentioned that the Association for Palliative Medicine (APM) had announced plans to launch an investigation into the controversial Liverpool Care pathway. Today both the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail have run the story. In addition a Daily Mail editorial today welcomes the investigation and outlines the major concerns that have been expressed […]
Ten years of assisted suicide at Dignitas – another excuse for an international news story
Now that the Tony Nicklinson case is over and the next assisted suicide bills (from Falconer in the House of Lords and Macdonald in Scotland) are not to be debated until next year one could be forgiven for thinking that the relentless media pressure for the legalisation of euthanasia might relent for a few weeks. […]
Palliative Medicine specialists to investigate Liverpool Care Pathway
The Association for Palliative Medicine, representing over 1,000 doctors working in hospices and specialist palliative care units throughout the UK, is going to carry out new research into the use of the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP). The LCP was developed to assist in the care of patients entering the last hours and days of […]
27% of all human deaths in England and Wales are due to abortion
A full listing of ‘all’ deaths in England and Wales in 2010 is available on the Guardian website in an interesting article titled ‘Mortality statistics: every cause of death in England and Wales, visualised’. In all there were 493,242 deaths in England and Wales from ‘all causes’. This includes 224 babies ‘dying before, during or […]
‘Death Lists’ – how unbalanced reporting can damage a well-intentioned initiative to improve care
In the last two days the Daily Mail has run two articles with the following alarmist headlines: Put 1 in 100 patients on death list, GPs told: Frailest to be asked to choose ‘end-of-life’ care 3,000 doctors putting patients on ‘death lists’ that single them out to be allowed to die The articles draw attention […]