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Cosmetic Surgery – What is the Matter with Dr Salesman?
Written by Roman Gaehwiler Reconstructive plastic surgery to correct ravages of disease and injuries as well as gross physical abnormalities constitutes a core medical practice. Reconstructive procedures, however, lie along a continuum, without any clear boundary between therapeutic reconstructive surgery for diagnosable problem and purely cosmetic surgery.[1]
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The NHS Should Make and Sell its own Homeopathic Remedies and Homeopaths Should be Paid the Minimum Wage
In March this year I blogged on the topic of NHS funding for homeopathic remedies. Even though I agreed with the critics of homeopathy, that there is no credible evidence for the efficacy of homeopathic remedies and that it is irrational to use these in preference to medical treatments that have actually been proven to
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Numeracy vs feel-good
Most people would agree that increasing energy efficiency is a sensible thing to do, both as a cost-saving measure, to conserve limited fossil fuels and to lower climate impacts. But being willing to save energy does not mean one is efficient in doing so: a new study shows that people are bad at estimating how
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Is it criminal not to breastfeed?
by Rebecca Roache The Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen recently—and controversially—claimed that mothers should be required by law to breastfeed their babies for the first six months of their lives. A few days later, she partially retracted the claim on her blog, insisting that her talk of a breastfeeding law should not be taken literally. It was
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Why We Should Criminalise Dangerous Sexual Behaviour
Recent post from my blog: Imagine that Herman has toxic radioactive waste from his laboratory. He decides to bury it in the ground next to his laboratory, knowing that it will expose the surrounding houses to dangerous radiation. As a result, Gertrude develops cancer some years later and dies at the age of 37. Herman
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Demedicalising and decriminalising drugs
Is drug addiction a disease? Substance Dependence appears as a diagnosis in the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-IV). There are medical specialists in the field who use a range of different drug and non-drug treatments for patients who are addicted. There are hospitals and clinics where those who are addicted can
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Off- and on-line, an outdated distinction
Almost a month ago the websites of several newspapers and magazines (http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpps/news/who-is-cyber-pranking-victim-jessi-slaughter-dpgoha-20100720-fc_8747638) reported the case of a young girl (11 years old) from Florida, known as Jessi Slaughter, who had been posting videos online (http://gawker.com/5589103/how-the-internet-beat-up-an-11+year+old-girl?skyline=true&s=i), which had been picked up by Stickydrama, a social networking tabloid website. One of the videos was a rather childish
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The ethics of prescribing antibiotics
Antibiotics are overprescribed. That is, they are given out in many cases where they will achieve little or nothing for the patient. On its own, this would merely be wasteful, but usage of antibiotics increases the development of antibiotic resistant organisms and this is bad for everyone. Today's Guardian has an article suggesting that antibiotic
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Competing against Mutants
Introduction In a recently broadcasted documentation about gene-doping, multiple award winning Swiss science journalist and author, Beat Glogger, reflected the issue of gene-doping in a sensitive and objective manner. In this Swiss-German co-production Andy Miah, a bold British Bioethicist, argued that gene-doping is supposed to be a natural friendly method of performance enhancement, whereas many
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Do we harm our children by revealing their sex?
by Rebecca Roache I am over a month late reading the news of the Swedish couple who have chosen to keep the sex of their toddler a closely-guarded secret, but the story is too interesting to pass up the opportunity to write about it here. The parents of the two-and-a-half year old child, known as