When your cosmetics make others ill
Student kicked out of class because of her hair product? This article got flagged up on Facebook: an African-American schoolgirl was kicked out of class by a white teacher in Seattle because her hair...
Category: Health
Wakefield, vaccines and ME
Earlier today, Dr Andrew Wakefield, who published a study in the Lancet, a major British medical journal suggesting that the triple vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) might be a cause of autism,...
Guardian on ME and retroviruses, and other press coverage
First of all, this past week has been ME Awareness Week as I mentioned several times in my last article. This fact has got lost in all the election talk as might have been...
Jeremy Vine meets Kay Gilderdale again
This week is ME Awareness Week ([1], [2]), and a number of media appearances and articles have been scheduled, including two appearances from Kay Gilderdale (on Radio 2 today and, allegedly, on GMTV tomorrow...
Me on the Late Show: transcript
Yesterday (Saturday) morning, I got to speak on the Late Show with Joanne Good on BBC London (94.9FM). She was doing a feature on bad comedy, specifically an incident in which Frankie Boyle, a...
Why don’t people abandon support groups with bad policies?
Recently I read an article by Jodi Bassett, a campaigner on ME issues who suffers from the severe form of that illness, on the Planet Thrive website (it’s also posted on her own site)...
Niqaab and rickets in the UK
Today I found a post at the blog The Answer’s 42 alleging that the so-called burqa was to blame for the increased incidence of vitamin D deficiency in Asian women in the UK and...
Ricky Gervais on ME, and other bad comedy
Yesterday I had a brief exchange of tweets with Organica, who told me of her enthusiasm for the British comedian, Ricky Gervais, best known for writing and starring in The Office, his stand-up shows,...
Early 1990s Kilroy flashback
Does anyone remember what Robert Kilroy-Silk was like before he wrote that column in the Daily Express — AKA Daily Spew — saying that the West owes Muslims nothing, being as we are all...
Panorama and other media coverage of the Gilderdale affair
I’ve been following the media coverage of the Lynn Gilderdale attempted murder trial with some interest as I found it quite emotionally affecting, and have found most of the coverage to be sympathetic to...
Facebook ‘fakery’ and vaccine scares
The noughties are defined by fakery | Hadley Freeman | Comment is free | The Guardian Hadley Freeman, normally a fashion columnist for the Guardian and someone I normally agree with fairly readily, opines...
The line between compassion and pity
Last Sunday, the New York Times ran a feature on a young woman, Stephanie Smith from Minnesota, who became paralysed and brain-damaged after eating a home-cooked hamburger contaminated with a virulent strain of E-Coli...
Head injury, and disabled and black perspectives on Serena Williams
BBC – BBC Radio 4 Programmes – Saturday Live, 12/09/2009 This programme features an interview with Jade Bracey, a young woman who suffered a head injury after being hit by a car on her...
Shisha ‘as harmful as cigarettes’
BBC NEWS | Health | Shisha ‘as harmful as cigarettes’ Why does anyone assume that shisha is less harmful than smoking cigarettes? Becuase it’s such a “cultural” experience, or because the smell of shisha...
Cameron rebukes idiot MEP
BBC NEWS | Politics | NHS attack MEP rebuked by Cameron David Cameron is the leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, and much as I despise that institution and much as I...
Come on Steve, prove you’re one of us
Where Are the British Birthers? | TPM Calling on Stephen Hawking to provide his bona fides (hat tip: Ginny, via Twitter): Perhaps there will be some brave republican willing to spearhead an investigation of...
Stupidity about health targets and cancer
In today's Guardian, a senior NHS doctor, using a pseudonym, talks about the target culture which led to the scandal at Stafford Hospital yesterday, in which 400 more patients died in three months than...