Been wondering what’s happened to “values” and the culture wars in this campaign? So have I, and I’ve had a stab at an answer to the question over at the ABC’s election op/ed site Unleashed.
Originally posted at LP in Exile.
Archive for the 'Medicine' Category
In our last big discussion on problems in the public health system (regarding the Coalition plan to initiate a revamped hospital training program for new nurses) a lot of us pointed fingers at the bean counters as the reason why hospital nurses no longer have time to provide patients with the emotional support that used to be a core feature of nursing, a support which patients - sorry, should I use the bean-counters’ preferred term, clients? - regularly complain about no longer receiving.
In all the discussion of last week’s hospital scandal about the woman who miscarried in the Royal North Shore Hospital (RNSH) Casualty toilet area while waiting for obstetrical assessment and a bed, people (including the NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher with her knee-jerk directive which has no funding or staffing attached to implement it, and Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott’s Fantastic Voyage advocating the olden days of competing and duplicative local boards) seem mostly upset about the reported lack of sensitivity and emotional support shown by the staff in the system. With all the sympathy in the world for the woman’s ordeal and the couple’s emotional trauma, I think this focus misses some key points about the fundamental reason that ER departments regularly have unacceptably extended wait times, which is not just about understaffing and overwork in the ER itself.
Continue reading ‘Capacity, utilisation and peak demand’
If you believe ABC News Online, “Howard spends up big on medical research“:
Prime Minister John Howard has announced health and medical research grants worth $560 million, saying the funding is the result of good economic management.
Of course, this is judging the state of the forest by examining one newly-planted tree. See over the fold for the picture on overall government R&D spending:
Continue reading ‘Government trickles out pennies to R&D’
I admit it - I sleep naked.
I didn’t adopt this practice all at once. As a small child I wore pyjamas - basically because my parents decided I should. However about the time I reached single figures I decided I was more comfortable sleeping with only the pyjama bottoms on. During my adolescence and early adulthood, by increments, I discarded what remained of my nocturnal wrappings and have been a nude sleeper for at least the past 20 years, probably longer. Yet it is only in the past week that I have thought much about this habit and done some research into it.
I find sleeping naked much more comfortable than sleeping in any kind of clothing. Indeed, in Brisbane summers I doubt very much that I could sleep any other way. It now puzzles me that anyone, given the option, would choose to sleep not naked. Yet, if the sleeping habits of Australians are anything like those of our fellow Anglophones in the US and the UK, I’m still part of a deviant minority.
Continue reading ‘Altogether asleep’
[…] almost 70 per cent of males and 60 per cent of females do not know what volume of alcohol puts them at risk of brain damage.
Leading Melbourne neuropsychologists Martin Jackson says the latest research shows women are at high risk if they consume at least three standard drinks a day for eight to 10 years.
Dr Jackson says men who quaff at least six standard drinks a day for eight to 10 years face the same risk of brain damage.
I’m not interested in hearing who’s over and under, but I am curious about who already knew that the amount of alcohol intake that would ultimately lead to measurable brain damage was as low as it is. I certainly knew that the guidelines for women are no more than 2 units of alcohol per day and overall fewer than 12 units per week, but I viewed that as a general health guideline rather than a specific avoidance-of-brain-damage guideline.
The brain damage manifests insidiously, and largely is demonstrated by increasing forgetfulness and inability to learn new skills, both of which are highly associated with eventual job loss.
Sydney University hosted a series of public lectures in May and June on issues including security, government, work and higher education. The concluding lecture was entitled Biology and the New Communities and it was delivered by Assoc. Prof. Catherine Waldby. As her list of publications indicates, she’s one of the world’s leading authorities on the social implications of biomedical technologies.
Continue reading ‘LP Podcast! Interview with Biopolitics Expert’
One of the catchries levelled against psychoanalysis is that it’s not amenable to scientific verification. New research into transference suggests that might not be the case:
Some psychoanalysts after Freud have viewed transference as applying not only to therapists. They see it in the reenactment with new individuals of patterns that were established with key people in one’s life. The phenomenon is grounded in a need to regularly forge satisfying and secure social ties, those analysts say.
The article is an interesting one, suggesting clinical applications for transference research. But, more broadly, it seems to me to be almost a truism that we view new encounters and relationships through the prism of past ones.
There’s been a lot of press this last week about the reported breakthough in genome testing that will pinpoint clusters of imperfectly-copied genes that increase the risk of inheriting breast cancer. Much of the excitement is due to the fact that the technique can be equally well used in testing for other genetic combinations that increase the risk of developing cancers of all sorts, not just the breast tissue.
There’s no doubt that it is an exciting development indeed. There’s been plenty of hoopla, and the scientists who developed this will no doubt do very well from it, and so they should. However, I want to pinpoint one aspect that’s missing or at least glossed over in a lot of the coverage of the original Nature article detailing the new technique: inherited cancer vulnerability doesn’t explain most diagnosed cancers.
Contrast this fairly typical coverage from Business Weekly:
Two of the genetic regions they identified contain genes that are thought to increase breast cancer risk by about 20 per cent in women who carry one faulty copy of a gene and by between 40 and 60 per cent if they carry two faulty copies.
The lifetime risk for women who carry two faulty copies in either of these two genes would rise from one in 11 to around one in six or one in seven, respectively.
With this from Medical Laboratory World:
Breast cancer that is caused by inherited genetic faults is thought to account for around 5% to 10% of the 44,000 new cases diagnosed each year.
They’re both actually saying the same thing about the proportion of inherited gene factors leading to cancer, but one is using obfuscation to glide by it and the other is being clear about how inherited genetic faults are a minority of cancer cases.
Now obviously, if people with a genetic vulnerability know of it and are thus more aware of possible early symptoms and thus seek early treatment, this has the potential to save thousands of lives, or at least to prevent them from having to undergo radical surgery if their cancer can be treated less invasively and still be controlled. But what are the factors thought to be oncogenic amongst the 90-95% of breast cancer patients diagnosed each year who aren’t thought to have a particular genetic vulnerability?
is today, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth.
Too many people flippantly dismiss Myalgic Ecephalitis and/or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as “yuppie flu” and a mere psychosomatic illness, despite mounting evidence that CFS is a genuine disorder of the immune system and leads to chronic debilitating metabolic impairment.
The immunological and metabolic abnormalities associated with CFS are measurable, so long as one can convince one’s doctor to have the tests done. This is not an imaginary disorder based on lack of willpower or seeking attention.
Next year, any one of you could be incapable of reading this blog anywhere other than your bed.
Further reading
From Robyn Riley at the Herald Sun: Cruelty of Chronic Fatigue
From my new co-blogger at Hoyden About Town, Lauredhel:
Stop and think: invisible access for invisible disabilities
A new study, whose findings were released today, provides further evidence to suggest that there is no link between induced abortion and breast cancer.
A 2003 international expert panel convened by the National Cancer Institute reviewed and assessed research regarding reproductive events and the risk of breast cancer, and concluded that based on existing evidence, induced abortion is not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. “The data from the NHSII provide further evidence of a lack of an important overall association between induced or spontaneous abortions and risk of breast cancer,� the authors conclude. “Among this predominantly pre-menopausal population, neither induced nor spontaneous abortion was associated with the incidence of breast cancer.�
Now, before any one decides to go there - even if induced abortion increased the risk of breast cancer, it is not a reason to ban the procedure. The only issue is ensuring that women are made aware of all risks involved with any medical procedure.
But lying to women is not on. This is just the latest piece of research to suggest that there is no link. Even anti-choicers themselves implicitly accept that there is no proven link when on rare occasions they decide to use language more carefully. Continue reading ‘Truthiness’
In light of certain special interest groups who expect our current federal government to follow the lead of the Bush administration, an important point needs to be made widely known: the new abortion decision from the US Supreme Court will not save the life of a single foetus.
What it will mean is that women who have terminal late-term complications (for themselves or their foetus) in a wanted pregnancy will be prohibited from using a procedure - intact dilation and extraction (IDX) - that protects their future ability to bear children. [more on this at Bitch PhD]
Indeed, for their future health and safety many of these women will have to terminate any future pregnancies early, because they will be unable to safely carry a pregnancy to full-term. Follow the maths: there will in fact be more abortions as a result of this ruling, not fewer.
N.B. Graphic details of uterine surgery follow:
Continue reading ‘The US Supreme Court’s ruling on Gonzales v. Carhart’
Feministing links to the story that San Antonio scientists are working on a vaccine to prevent chlamydia. Ann writes:
Not only is chlamydia one of the most common STDs, it’s one that primarily affects women — men can transmit it but don’t experience symptoms. (Though it may lower men’s chances of conceiving. Check out this article with the best/worst punny headline ever.) So this is great news. One more step toward a world where there will be NO medical reason to abstain from sex as long as all your shots are in order! And this is one less scary-STD slide for the high-school wrestling coach to show during sex-ed week… Isn’t that what conservatives fear about the HPV vaccine? Muhahaha.
So I guess we can assume that should the research be successful, we can all look forward to another round of HPV vaccine-style “culture wars”, where one side thinks it’s great that science has found another way to help prevent disease, and the other side is upset that there’s one less thing to scare us away from things that are fun.
I was meaning to post on this column by William Saletan a while back, and I think it’s an interesting question to raise in relation to this news.
The Australian reports that:
Sexually assaulted women who seek help at Catholic-controlled hospitals cannot be referred to rape crisis centres that supply morning-after pills, under church policy.
The situation described in the article hardly needs further comment. However it once again highlights the problems inherent in having non-public agencies (such as a church) performing a public function (in this case, running a hospital) in a democratic, pluralistic society. In this case the rights and interests of rape survivors are subordinated to the Church dogma about how a woman in such a predicament ought to respond and what options she ought to have, rather than how she might wish to respond and the options she might wish to have given her own knowledge (which is superior to the Church’s) of her personal situation.
I can’t get my head around this.
Essentially, Ashley X is a three-month old child mentally, despite her physical age of nine years, thanks to brain damage of some sort.
Her parents and the medical team at Seattle Children’s Hospital decided, when Ashley was six, to pursue a course of treatment to ensure that her body remained essentially childlike for the rest of her life. According to The Gaurdian this involved removing her “uterus to prevent fertility, excision of early buds on her chest so that she would not develop breasts, and medication with high doses of oestrogen to limit her growth by prematurely fusing the growth plates of her bones”.
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