Herd immunity requires that the majority of people are vaccinated to stop proliferation of disease. Measles, for example, is so contagious that about 90 per cent of people who are not immune will become infected if they come close to an infected person. However, childhood vaccination rates have been falling as anti-vaccine sentiment grows, particularly […]
Mindfulness, which is essentially meditation rebranded for the squeamish, is embedded in the history of Indic consciousness traditions such as the Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists going back thousands of years. Essentially a journey of self-discovery, ‘mindfulness’ is a word created to make meditation palatable to a new generation of people who don’t want to be […]
Would any doctor continue to prescribe a drug which they had been told would benefit 20 per cent of patients with a specific illness, once the truth was revealed to be around 7 per cent, only one percent better than no treatment at all? You’d have to hope not and that concerned and angry doctors […]
Replacing worn-out body parts with brand new, fully working artificial ones sounds like a great idea. In fact, millions of people in Britain are now walking around with artificial hips, knees, elbows, lumbar vertebrae, tendons and internal plastic eye lenses. There are even a few dozen people leading full lives with titanium mechanical hearts in their chests, helping to pump […]
Sarah is about to start her first assignment for MSF, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She blogs about why she decided to sign up, how she’s been preparing, and one very important question… This time a year ago I was an NHS general practitioner in Banbury. In two weeks time I will probably be […]
Women who have had their appendixes removed are actually more likely to conceive a child afterwards, rather than less. This is what our latest large-scale study, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, has found which flies in the face of the classic view that appendectomies harm a woman’s chance of having a baby because they […]
The little things make a big difference. Your hammer and anvil are as valuable as your hand and your arm, your pineal gland as essential as your patella. To quote St Paul, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would […]
The Bordetella pertussis bacteria, which causes whooping cough, is a highly contagious bacterial infection of the lungs and airways which is spread through infected droplets in the air. In recent years, there have been spikes of incidence of this infection, despite a vaccination programme. Symptoms only develop 6-20 days after exposure to the virus. At first, cold-like […]
Anyone can snore, but, according to the British Snoring and Sleep Apnoea Association (BSSAA), more than two-thirds of snorers are men. ‘Men are more likely to carry weight around their neck and throat, and are more likely to drink and smoke – all factors that contribute to snoring,’ admits Marianne Davey, co-founder of the BSSAA. […]
Is your beginning worth more than your end? Helplessness defines both ends of life: our need to be washed, fed, carried (or hoisted) in a world where nothing makes much sense, we struggle to be understood, and where human touch brings special comfort. Why then do we care so much more for our newborns than […]