The Privatisation Paradox
Log into twitter and follow the #NHS hashtag and it doesn’t take long to conclude that the NHS is in the throes of a back-door privatisation programme, driven by an overzealous government with the ideological ‘bit’ between its teeth. This...
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Snog, eat, avoid?
Beloved companion or health risk? Or dinner? Start a debate about how we should relate to other species, and sparks soon fly – the ethics of hunting, bull fighting, laboratory tests on rabbits, eating some animals and not others, and...
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Public Outrage Saves Lives?
So is this ‘the most horrifying ad’ ever made? The new advert by St John ambulance is entitled Helpless. In just two minutes we witness various scenes from the life of a man diagnosed with cancer. The advert is shot beautifully...
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“We need to talk about Jeremy”
As far back as the ‘National Listening Exercise’ in April 2011 it was fairly obvious that the Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, was a dead man walking. This became reality last week when Lansley was replaced by Jeremy Hunt as Secretary...
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Is driving the new smoking?
Cars are rubbish for health. The trouble is, speed, shiny new wheels and Top Gear do still exert a strange attraction for rather too many of us… Our love affair with a private bubble of transport has been blamed for...
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Ever Get The Feeling You’re Being ‘TUPE’d’?
The 2012 Health and Social Care Act (HSC) marks the de-regulation of primary health care in England. Much of the critical response to the legislation has been concerned with the implications for patients: what will the reforms mean for the...
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And the cupboard was bare…
In his Greedy Bastards Hypothesis Scambler (2004) argues that a capitalist class (the greedy bastards) are centrally complicit in widening health inequalities due to their commitment to social and structural changes associated with disorganized capitalism – such as changes that...
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Idiot’s guide to ethical publishing in a competitive world.
Pay walls preventing access to research funded by tax-payers: bad. Open access publishing: good. Greedy multi-national publishers with high profit margins: bad. Academics working for greedy publishers for free: absurd. Individual academics declaring boycott of greedy publishers: good. Academics’ collective...
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Polypharmacy?
Have you ever worried about mixing different medications? Have you ever been prescribed several medicines at once and found it difficult to keep track of different pills? Researchers at Barts in London think they have an answer, proposing that several...
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Bloody jumped-up nurses – they obviously know too much…
It’s happening again – the overly “academic” training of nurses is being blamed for the development of a compassion-less culture in the NHS. Cameron was at it back in 2010 and in January this year, the Daily Telegraph was trumpeting...
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The cost of bleeping care