Tech Companies are Shaping Health Knowledge for Profit
Healthcare and treatment have always been closely entwined with technological innovation and learning. Knowledge of the body, as well as treatments and procedures which medics perform, have been made possible by the development of stethoscopes, X-rays and MRIs amongst myriad...
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Ending the hostile environment in health: The responsibility of intellectuals
As usual I was running late. Walking away from patients or relatives at the end of the day working as a doctor in the NHS is never an easy task. But it is something that has become increasingly difficult since...
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The myth of sudden ‘No-deal’ food shortages
A friend of mine whispered to me the other day that he is stockpiling items of food in advance of the impending ‘no deal’ Brexit food chaos. Indeed a quarter of UK voters have started taking precautions against the adverse...
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Political Suicide
Last week it was #WorldSuicidePreventionDay – social media was awash with supportive messages being thrown into the ether for whoever might see/need them, or to virtue signal. We are told it is ok not to be ok, that we should...
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Cool to Care?
Social Change, the Climate Emergency, and the ‘Snowflake Generation’ The idea that it’s ‘cool to care’ and the recent rise of ethical consumerism in the UK has been driven by ‘Millennials’. But is ‘cool to care’ simply a reworking of...
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Predictive Genetics For All – Minister Hancock’s big idea
The future of the NHS is in prevention rather than cure. And the mass application of genetics profiling can bring that about say Health Minister Hancock and his new best friend…. There are big changes afoot in terms of the...
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Anti-stigma campaigns in mental health: what gets left out?
Over the past two decades, stigma for people with mental health problems has become an increasing concern for researchers, practitioners, service users and politicians. This has led to several international government funded campaigns to increase public awareness of the realities...
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Atalanta the Greek Amazon: revisioning gender equality in STEMM
In a previous blog in 2015, commenting on the film ‘Suffragette’, I compared the situation for women in science depicted in the film with modern times. One of the main characters, Edith, was a qualified pharmacist but had been denied...
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Doctors as border police: what happened to ‘first, do no harm’?
Building trust and acting in the patient’s best interests are guiding principles of medical practice. This is especially true when caring for vulnerable and marginalised people, such as undocumented migrants. They often delay going to the doctor and find it...
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The Fragility of the Enterprise
I’m at a medium-sized conference, one I’ve attended several times before and I am in a deep depression*. An anthropologist I don’t know is looking at me, intently. She has just told me that she’s especially interested in what I...
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Promoting health without promoting stigma?
Cancer Research UK (CRUK) is again under fire for its campaigning on obesity. There was a lot wrong with their most recent posters, which equated obesity with smoking as a cause of cancer. The debates that followed highlighted the vital...
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Are cities bad for our mental health?