Find a letter in the Independent from the Director-General of the Cosmetic Toiletry Perfumery Association. He is absolutely right to say that the presence of fragrances in the air is not proven to cause allergic reactions, because, in science, nothing is capable of being proven. So the "not proven" is a good standby to continue doing exactly as you please irrespective of any consequences. It took 20 years and 20,000 scientific studies to "prove" that smoking caused lung cancer.
The major problem with perfumes is not allergy, although classical allergic skin reactions are indeed possible to perfumes, but intolerance reactions. There is now good statistical evidence from the Children of the 90's study, as well as my general practice based observations, to indicate that some people are better off in a perfume free environment.
Industry is naturally responding to this with denials, but it would do better by making perfume free options available for consumers. And the challenge for public health authorities is for creating perfume free public spaces. In this regard California is about 50 years in advance of the UK.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Friday, November 26, 2004
Too reasonable to print
Spent half an hour yesterday talking to a nice reporter on "Pulse", a medical magazine, about the underfunding of health services in our locality. She had picked up on the story that you read about here first - One Doc for 200,000 patients - cool.I go to a lot of pains to explain what is going on, and direct her to my website where it's all written down. She kindly reads her copy back. "Dr Lawson calls for more money for Out of Hours Services". (I wasn't really, but who couldn't do with more money. Let it stand). "He is worried about only having two doctors on at night". I asked her to add - "But he is reassured by the arrangements for a squad of back up GPs to be called out if the on call docs are overwhelmed". She says, "OK, I'll put it in, but the sub-editors will probably take it out because it sounds too reasonable".
What? "Too reasonable?" How can anything be "Too reasonable"? Especially in the field of public information?
Pulse is not a bad newspaper, it is just an average freebie medical newspaper that we refer to technically as a one of the "throwaways". Pulse just buys into the adversarial paradigm that underpins our media.
I once heard two experts on a radio programme agreeing with each other. You could hear the mounting panic and hysteria of the interviewer as he tried to manipulate them into disagreeing.
To a great extent, the media mould our minds. What a pity they go for division rather than consensus. Or reason.
What? "Too reasonable?" How can anything be "Too reasonable"? Especially in the field of public information?
Pulse is not a bad newspaper, it is just an average freebie medical newspaper that we refer to technically as a one of the "throwaways". Pulse just buys into the adversarial paradigm that underpins our media.
I once heard two experts on a radio programme agreeing with each other. You could hear the mounting panic and hysteria of the interviewer as he tried to manipulate them into disagreeing.
To a great extent, the media mould our minds. What a pity they go for division rather than consensus. Or reason.
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Ukraine out loud, US sucks thumb
Two rigged votes, two reactions: in the USA, Democrats suck their thumbs and say sorry, while the Ukraine is in uproar.
In the Ukraine they are out on the streets, demanding the fruits of democracy, threatening general strikes. Fears of civil war. Headline news across the world.
Western observers report:
Abuse of state resources and "overt media bias" in favour of Mr Yanukovych
State workers pressured to give absentee voting certificate to their superiors
Intimidation reported at some polling stations
Suspiciously high turnout in two pro-government regions
In the USA, on the other hand, the media is almost completely dumb on the subject of:
inadequate access to the poll
malfunctioning machines in Democrat areas
serious and well-substantiated allegations of hacking of e-vote computers.
Nobody wants to look at the evidence.
Kerry, having conceded too early, is sitting on $50 million unspent electoral money, while the Greens raise $150,000 by public subscription to get a recount in Ohio.
Why the difference? I would suggest that the Ukraine knows what authoritarianism is like, having suffered it for half a century. Americans have waxed fat in the plenitude of liberty for too long, and have assumed that it is their inalienable birthright. Ukraine knows that the media can lie. America believes what it is told to believe. Ukraine is on its feet, America is on its butt - with the exception of Bev Harris and the Cleanup Crew and all the other brave dedicated volunteers who are the true patriots, the true descendants of the Minutepersons, defenders of the American way.
In the Ukraine they are out on the streets, demanding the fruits of democracy, threatening general strikes. Fears of civil war. Headline news across the world.
Western observers report:
Abuse of state resources and "overt media bias" in favour of Mr Yanukovych
State workers pressured to give absentee voting certificate to their superiors
Intimidation reported at some polling stations
Suspiciously high turnout in two pro-government regions
In the USA, on the other hand, the media is almost completely dumb on the subject of:
inadequate access to the poll
malfunctioning machines in Democrat areas
serious and well-substantiated allegations of hacking of e-vote computers.
Nobody wants to look at the evidence.
Kerry, having conceded too early, is sitting on $50 million unspent electoral money, while the Greens raise $150,000 by public subscription to get a recount in Ohio.
Why the difference? I would suggest that the Ukraine knows what authoritarianism is like, having suffered it for half a century. Americans have waxed fat in the plenitude of liberty for too long, and have assumed that it is their inalienable birthright. Ukraine knows that the media can lie. America believes what it is told to believe. Ukraine is on its feet, America is on its butt - with the exception of Bev Harris and the Cleanup Crew and all the other brave dedicated volunteers who are the true patriots, the true descendants of the Minutepersons, defenders of the American way.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Dancing on the pinhead of patient choice
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to express my impotent rage and fury that the both Tory and Labour health speakers are pranting their abstract fantasies about "patient choice" in the NHS* when to all intents and purposes out here in the real world my patients have no acess to meaningful services in child and adult psychiatry, nor to reasonable cardiology services nor can rapid response teams access IV fluids nor can we access 1001 other simple basic secondary care services within reasonable time - yet the leaders of our two main political parties are fighting each other for the priviledge of dancing upon the pinhead of patient choice. Whom the gods wish to destroy...
*NHS = National Health Service, an extraordinary arrangement whereby everyone can access healthcare on the basis of species (only homo sapiens need apply) rather than size of wallet. Born in 1940s by a Labour government, poisoned in 2000s by New Labour government.
*NHS = National Health Service, an extraordinary arrangement whereby everyone can access healthcare on the basis of species (only homo sapiens need apply) rather than size of wallet. Born in 1940s by a Labour government, poisoned in 2000s by New Labour government.
Monday, November 22, 2004
Next!
Found the Next Blog button, and took a little trip around the neighbourhood. Immediate feeling of being in one of those Japanese honeycomb hotels, with the bare minimum of space to live, the ultimate reduction of environment, a mechanical womb. Or like prostitutes in an Amsterdam brothel - here I am, look. Read me! Enjoy me! Here we live out our virtual existences free to express ourselves to everybody and nobody at the same time. I reach out to read somebody I know. It is comforting to know that behind these characters on the screen there is a character in real life. Maybe we are real after all.
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Tears of joy
When she hit the first chords today, the whole audience burst into tears, except Grace and Zak.
We had wheeled her in to the living room to a smatter of applause, straight over to the piano as instructed by Leda. The expectation was that she might symbolically hit middle C with one wobbly finger to inaugurate the musical rehabilitation that the family hoped for, a hope that her doctors clearly regarded as totally unrealistic. The chords assembled themselves into "Autumn leaves", played without a bum note apart from a short bass discord contributed by Grace.
This was further miracle in a succession of miracles (or coincidences or unusual or significant events depending on your point of view). For instance:
- the subarachnoid haemorrhage hit her not when she was alone in her cottage by the river, but just as Leda was on her way to visit.
- she recovered after arriving in A&E with a GCS 1 (10 being normal and 0 being dead)
- she did not rebleed in the stormy difficult days of waiting for the technological miracle of the neurosurgeons at Kings who inserted a bit of Brillo pad into the abnormal blob of artery to prevent a rebleed,
- a series of recoveries from various hospital acquired infections that had her and us peering over the edge of the abyss from time to time
- but which we did not fear because of the series of dreams, daydreams and visions which gave us a straw to choose to cling to
- the second technological miracle of the shunt put in to relieve pressure on the brain ("It may prevent her getting worse, but please do not expect it to get any better", said the surgeon before she went down for the operation),
- and the crowning miracle of Virginia waking up the day after the operation like Alvar Nunez Cabeza da Vacca's first Native American rising from the dead, saying "When do we eat?".
All that and now this. No wonder we wept - except Zac and Grace, who being under three feet in height, were slightly embarrassed, having assumed that tears were the sole prerogative of little people.
We had wheeled her in to the living room to a smatter of applause, straight over to the piano as instructed by Leda. The expectation was that she might symbolically hit middle C with one wobbly finger to inaugurate the musical rehabilitation that the family hoped for, a hope that her doctors clearly regarded as totally unrealistic. The chords assembled themselves into "Autumn leaves", played without a bum note apart from a short bass discord contributed by Grace.
This was further miracle in a succession of miracles (or coincidences or unusual or significant events depending on your point of view). For instance:
- the subarachnoid haemorrhage hit her not when she was alone in her cottage by the river, but just as Leda was on her way to visit.
- she recovered after arriving in A&E with a GCS 1 (10 being normal and 0 being dead)
- she did not rebleed in the stormy difficult days of waiting for the technological miracle of the neurosurgeons at Kings who inserted a bit of Brillo pad into the abnormal blob of artery to prevent a rebleed,
- a series of recoveries from various hospital acquired infections that had her and us peering over the edge of the abyss from time to time
- but which we did not fear because of the series of dreams, daydreams and visions which gave us a straw to choose to cling to
- the second technological miracle of the shunt put in to relieve pressure on the brain ("It may prevent her getting worse, but please do not expect it to get any better", said the surgeon before she went down for the operation),
- and the crowning miracle of Virginia waking up the day after the operation like Alvar Nunez Cabeza da Vacca's first Native American rising from the dead, saying "When do we eat?".
All that and now this. No wonder we wept - except Zac and Grace, who being under three feet in height, were slightly embarrassed, having assumed that tears were the sole prerogative of little people.
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