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…
Dilnot lays some tentative foundations
Monday saw the publication of the Dilnot Report – the latest in a long line of reports and studies commissioned by government into how we, as a society, are going to care for our growing, and increasingly long lived elderly population. This is more than an academic exercise. A century ago, few people lived long […]
Major British study links premature births to previous abortions
The Times has just reported on new research which shows that women who have had an abortion are more likely to give birth to a premature baby and to suffer several other pregnancy complications when they next conceive. This is hugely significant just as parliament is about to debate an amendment to the Health and […]
Adoption czar: women with unwanted pregnancies should give up babies for adoption
It’s not every day that you hear someone official say something profoundly politically incorrect but true and have it reported by the Times. The Times front page today carried photographs of a whole host of well known celebrities and personalities who were adopted and ran an in depth feature on the issue highlighting a report […]
MPs attack the ‘ingrained bias’ of staff at the BBC on euthanasia
I recently blogged about the BMA vote to undermine the Falconer Commission on assisted suicide and about why I had told the Daily Mail that the BBC was acting as a cheerleader for assisted suicide. I see today that a group of MPs has attacked the ‘ingrained bias’ of staff at the BBC towards a […]
The tip of the iceberg: latest from Developing Health 2011
JachinDanielraj is an inspiring lady. She is an Indian doctor now based at the famous Christian Medical College in Vellore. But she hasn’t always been in this big centre. She spent 13 years in a rural mission hospital, working hard to serve the poor. She told us the story of a child who made her […]
Newly revealed abortion statistics evidence of eugenic mindset and failed teenage sexual health strategy
Today, as a result of losing a six year long court battle to the ProLife Alliance (see my earlier blog), the Department of Health was finally forced to disclose the abortion statistics that it has been hiding since 2002. The Department had been refusing to reveal the abortion numbers in any category where there were […]
A movement has an emotional heart
Is the NHS a philosophy, a movement or just an organisation? It has a philosophy – healthcare based on need rather than ability to pay, and certainly it has organisations, but does it have an emotional heart, the characteristic of a movement according to Seth Godin? Seth, author of the bestselling marketing books of the […]
Vicky Lavy blogs from Developing Health 2011
We’re at the beginning of week two of the Developing Health Course. Week one was packed with 33 hours of excellent teaching – exhausting but very inspiring. We’ve heard about trematodes and trypanosomes, scalp veins and scabies, red eyes and refugees. We’ve learnt about diseases affecting millions of people such as malaria, TB, malnutrition, and […]
Video debate from the BMA on the Falconer Commission
The video below includes coverage of the full day’s business on Thursday’s Annual Representative Meeting of the British Medical Association. Dr Mark Pickering (Yorkshire Regional Councuil) speaks for ARM Motion 305 (from the time mark 1:56) and Wendy Savage speaks against (from time mark 2:01). The full debate and vote then follows Loading…Webcast Available Here […]
British Medical Association undermines credibility of Falconer Commission on Assisted Dying
The British Medical Association, representing 140,000 British doctors, has this morning questioned the stated impartiality and independence of Lord Falconer’s Commission on Assisted Dying, supported the BMA leadership’s stance in not giving evidence to it and called on the British Medical Journal Editorial team to present a balanced and unbiased coverage of the Commission. Delegates […]
This week’s hot topic is not PC
This week’s hot topic is not one many people have thought much about. But organ donation, and particularly ‘presumed consent’ (PC), is one we will all have to start thinking much more about in the next five years. It was one of three debates on Tuesday (28 June) at the BMA, it has been covered […]
BMA still not listening on late abortion
On Tuesday 28 June the British Medical Association annual representative meeting voted against a motion which sought to provide legal protection for babies at the threshold of viability by a two to one majority. The motion, proposed by John O’Driscoll of the Worcestershire division, read as follows:’ That this Meeting believes that the legal limit for […]