
blogs


Lucy Letby- a deep grief
This is such a deeply disturbing case. One of the most horrifying scandals to ever hit the NHS. A neonatal…

Doctors on strike – reflections of a conflicted consultant
On 1 August 1983, my life changed forever. I started work in the NHS. I lost all that I had known of…

Complete societal capture on abortion
The sentencing of a woman for two years imprisonment for performing a home abortion with pills obtained…

Mitochondrial manipulated births: a muted reception
For a prospect anticipated for almost 20 years, the announcement in a Guardian exclusive of the successful…

When is a ‘synthetic’ embryo a real embryo?
Embryonic stem cell-derived embryos (ESCDEs) have been around for a long time.
Last year, an ESCDE,…

You wouldn’t do it to a dog! Current fetal pain relief in NHS abortions
This blog should perhaps carry one of those BBC-style warnings, ‘some viewers may find the following…

Moral flip-flopping over doctors and the death penalty
I have long argued that ethicists who advocate euthanasia while at the same time being opposed to capital…

‘Because you’re worth it?’ The BMA and the junior doctors’ strikes
Easter 2023 is likely to be remembered for a long time in the NHS. Straight after a four-day bank holiday…

‘Of Mice and Men’
The Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in 2018 really hit the headlines when Prof He…

When is a baby not a baby?
Last week Panorama ran an ‘investigation’ into pregnancy advice centres which they claimed give misleading…

Neuro-silicon interfaces: a new mode of being?
The idea of humankind being merely machines has a long history, stretching back to Julien Offrey De La…
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 […]