John Martyn

John Martyn died today, aged 60. I could choose I don’t know how many songs to share to remember him but here is one of his most famous and best. I love this version. It’s from the Transatlantic Crossing series – so many wonderful performances in those programmes. Here he’s joined by Kathy Mattea, Danny [...]

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Suppressing the bad news – drug trials and publication bias

There have been several studies which have shown that there is evidence of selection bias in the publication of drug trials. In this post here I gave a couple of examples of concerns about both the sheer number of trials conducted vs the number of publication outlets, and the huge percentage of registered trials which [...]

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The “butterfly effect” in real lives

Maybe you remember the story from last year about the Spanish woman whose trachea (windpipe) had been destroyed by TB, and how a team of doctors in Bristol grew her a new one from her own stem cells? Well, it was a pretty remarkable story, but here’s an interestingly different angle on that story.
Prof Anthony [...]

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Skilfullful, compassionate doctors

I was a little surprised to find this as “news” -
Patients and their families want physicians who are gifted in diagnosis and treatment and who are caring individuals with the interpersonal skills needed to communicate complex information in stressful circumstances. A new study in the January 2009 issue of Academic Medicine shows training physicians to [...]

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Making a mark

Out walking the other day and I came across this mark on the ground,

It’s like a butterfly or a flower or something. What was it? Isn’t it strange and beautiful?
Actually I’ve a pretty good idea what it is. Take a look at the other mark which was nearby,

One of the interesting things about these marks [...]

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Robert Burns – George Square, Glasgow

Glasgow City Council has made a great images and sound display to celebrate Robert Burns. They project images up onto the City Chambers in George Square and have a PA system playing a soundtrack to accompany them. I went along and filmed it with my Flip Ultra. Take a look. I think you’ll enjoy it. [...]

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Biodiversity and health

Nature loves diversity. Healthy ecosystems are filled with a wide range of species. Intensive farming has shown us how single species crops are difficult to maintain in good health which is why they need support from both fertilisers and “-cides” (insecticides, fungicides….). When a particular species becomes a pest we’ve made several attempts to counter [...]

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illness by Havi Carel

I’ve just read “illness” by Havi Carel (ISBN 978-1-84465-152-8). This is an excellent book and as Raymond Tallis says on the back “should be read and re-read by everyone who is professionally involved with illness, who is ill, or is likely to become ill; which is to say, by all of us”. I couldn’t agree [...]

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Old and blue

What caught my eye was the blue. This is a good example of how a camera lets you see more than your casual, passing glances do.
I can look at these images for a long time. The more I look at them, the more I see. I love the shapes, the colours, the rusty flakes, the [...]

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Health as flourishing

Defining health isn’t as easy as you might think. An article in the BMJ before Christmas raised the issue again and amongst the responses they received this one particularly appealed to me.
The definition of health is important. There is a biomedical component to health, but it exists in a setting that includes biological, personal, relational, [...]

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