Holiday parasites and furry friends
What did you bring back from your last holiday? Some happy memories, a sun-tan or perhaps something more exotic? A parasite? A stray dog? Both? Seventy-five per-cent of new human diseases are zoonotic. Concern for human public health means monitoring...
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‘BREAKING BAD’: markets, healthcare and drug money
The TV series Breaking Bad reached its conclusion at the end of September last year. This acclaimed drama has been described as: the most revered show of the modern golden age of television; as Dostoevsky in the desert; and it...
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Letter from America
A visit to the ‘land of freedom’ with its catastrophic health care costs is a warning not to be complacent about the NHS … Where it’s brushed against poison ivy, Kelly’s skin is badly blistered, a rash slowly spreading down...
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A&E crisis is a symptom, not a cause
Contrary to popular belief, attendances have stayed static since 2003 in what the Department of Health calls type 1 units – the big hospital-based A&E departments. Indeed, not a week passes without a news story about A&E departments: seven threatened...
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Manufacturing perfect debtors: a comment on the UK debt industries
The growing issue of personal debt (the so-called debt crisis) is more and more being represented as an issue of individual financial capability and responsibility. Problems of personal debt are constructed as something that can be remedied through improved access to financial management...
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‘Hard Times’ in The Archers at Christmas
It is often said that if Charles Dickens were writing now it would be for a popular soap opera perhaps as a script-writer for BBC radio 4 serial The Archers. John Yorke described soaps as ‘modern morality plays’; the latest...
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Age of Sexual Consent – is it a Public Health issue anyway?
Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, has suggested that the Government consider lowering the age of sexual consent from 16 to 15. He has certainly put the cat amongst the political pigeons (which is fun to...
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Ethics at the coalface
Two different research papers caught my eye this week, and for once both were open for anyone to read. Drawing on studies in very different places – a neuro-degenerative research centre in the UK (Brosnan et al.), and a research...
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From “doctor knows best” to “market knows best”
We are consistently told by this government that the public sector is wasteful and inefficient and that the private sector offers much better value for money for the ‘Great British Taxpayer’. The evidence for this is scant to say the...
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Obamacare, Individualism v Solidarity, and the NHS
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) came into force in the USA in June 2012 to regulate health insurance and curtail some of the worst practices engaged in by the for profit health care industry. The aim was to make affordable...
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Surgery for breakfast
A friend, recently returned from a city-break in Budapest, reported it wonderful in every respect. The only shock was the hotel breakfast menu: instead of the anticipated eggs benedict, croissants and coffee, she was confronted with dental implants, tear-drop breasts...
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Taking responsibility for our health