
blogs


Leadership in pandemics – six principles to guide us
The COVID19 epidemic has thrown nations into complete chaos. Fear and panic have gripped the world.…

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…

Christianity in a time of plague
Epidemic infections were a source of terror in the ancient world. They would sweep into the cities of…

Coronavirus – responding like Jesus
It is hard to have missed the news that coronavirus is a big thing. Government guidance and press conferences…

Transgender on trial
In March this year judges gave permission for Keira Bell, Susan Evans and a woman known as ‘Mrs A’…

Scottish Government muddles sex and gender – and plans to legalise the confusion
The Scottish Government is consulting on a plan to make the existing process to obtain legal recognition…

RCGP remains opposed to assisted suicide and euthanasia
The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) announced last Friday [21 February] that it ‘will…

2020: The Year of the Nurse and Midwife
It’s not often that such wide-ranging and global a body as the World Health Organization (WHO) deems…

Transgender: two pivotal points for the UK
Should it be possible for any person to change their legal sex based on their gender identity? And if…

‘I don’t want a baby like that’
The Sunday Times this weekend reported that ‘the number of babies born with Down’s syndrome has fallen…

Human dignity – a perspective from disability
‘In a hyper-competitive culture in which even baking a cake is a fight almost to the death… what…
Some brief Christian reflections on infertility treatments to mark Robert Edward’s receiving the Nobel Peace prize in medicine
The decision to award the Nobel prize in medicine to Robert Edwards(pictured), the British scientist who developed IVF, has met with a mixed reaction. On the one hand there have been 4 million babies born to couples who would not otherwise have been able to conceive. On the other IVF has opened what many regard […]
Humiliating defeat for Council of Europe pro-abortion activists who attempted to criminalise conscientious objection to abortion
You may not read about this in any British newspaper but, as reported on LifeSite News, an attempt to erase the conscience rights of EU health care workers with respect to abortion was soundly defeated at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) this evening. The report reads as follows: ‘In a vote […]
When you see a new pro-euthanasia doctors group given a media soapbox next week remember that they constitute a small vocal minority
A new pro-euthanasia group called Health Professionals for Change is due to be launched on 13 October at the Kings Fund. The group will be chaired by Oxford GP Ann McPherson (pictured), who herself is dying of pancreatic cancer and the launch is expected to be attended by a small number of high profile doctors […]
Some of the public reaction to Virginia Ironside advocating smothering a suffering child was deeply disturbing
Many viewers watching BBC1’s religious programme Sunday Morning Live last weekend will have been shocked to hear agony aunt Virginia Ironside advocating smothering a suffering child as an act of motherly love. Her actual words? ‘If I were the mother of a suffering child – I mean a deeply suffering child – I would be […]
American scientists make new breakthrough in producing embryonic-like stem cells by ethical means but British media doesn’t notice
The NECN headline this week ‘Harvard scientists make huge stem cell discovery’, is one of over 1,400 in the last few days announcing the latest development in the race to produce patient specific stem cells (pictured) without using human embryos. Ethical treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and multiple sclerosis are now one tantalising […]
Nottingham hospital officials shoot themselves in the foot by proposing Gideon Bible ban
I gather that hospital officials at the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust want to ban Gideon Bibles from patients’ bedside lockers. The ban, at the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, is intended to help cut levels of infectious superbugs such as MRSA. Apparently they want all bedside areas in Queen’s Medical Centre and City Hospital […]
Christianity provides medicine with a whole person perspective
When I was medical student I was required to write an essay on the nature of man. The secular world has developed many different models for human beings. There are psychoanalytical models like that of Sigmund Freud who saw man as the product of a complex reaction between superego, ego and id. Then there are […]
Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) extends its definition of ‘terminally ill’ to twelve months
The campaign group Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) prides itself on being more modest in the scope of its taste for medical killing that other more radical groups like SOARS, FATE, Exit International or Dignitas. But careful listeners to Radio Four’s ‘Exit Strategy: Choosing a Time to Die’ at 8 o’clock on […]
As UK Christian doctors, are we as radically different from non-Christians in our attitudes and actions as our Indian colleagues are?
I paid for my trip to India in stress and sweat. Not out there, but in the mad rush to clear my desk before departure, and in the bulging in-tray and looming deadlines on return. However the blessing I received in ten autumn days, through being involved in the EMFI national conference and in visiting […]
Current sexual health strategies are based on three false presuppositions
Can we imagine training young people how to drive without also instructing them in the laws of the road? Or teaching trainee surgeons how to remove an appendix without also training them in the proper indications for the procedure? And yet when it comes to sex, an activity which, like driving and surgery, carries high […]
Developing Health Course – Back home
Back in the office at Johnson House and life is returning to normal after a busy, sunny, exhausting, happy fortnight at Oak Hill. Laura and I are surrounded by about 800 feedback forms from all the different sessions! The participants were very positive about the course – ‘I’ve come away inspired and excited…’ ‘The standard […]
Developing Health Course 2010 – part VI
Today I want to be an obstetrician. Last week it was an ophthalmologist and then a psychiatrist after the moving talks we heard about the needs and opportunities in those fields. Yesterday we heard Jacqui Hill speak about the plight of woman in Afghanistan which UNICEF describes as ‘one of the worst places in the […]