Notes, journal, diary, blog, arguments, beliefs, cogitations, comments, considerations, contemplations, criticisms, daydreams, deliberations, engrossments, musings, opinions, phlogs, poems, points, rantings (occasional), reflections, ruminations, satire, wit, and pensiveness of a thinking man.
Posted in Health, Literature, Psychology, Therapy on Feb 26th, 2010
Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: Distinctive Features
Frank Wills
Routledge 2009
ISBN 978-0415439527 £9.99
This book sets out to provide a concise account of Beck’s work against a background of his personal and professional history. It is divided into two parts. There are 15 short chapters which examine Beck’s contribution to explaining psychopathology, and then 15 more looking at Beck’s suggestions [...]
Posted in Government, Health, Science on Feb 22nd, 2010
Despite some £4m a year being spent on homeopathy, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee said today that using public money on the highly diluted remedies could not be justified. The cross-party group said there was no evidence beyond a placebo effect, when a patient gets better because of their belief that the treatment [...]
Posted in Government, Health, Human Rights, Morality, Religion on Feb 9th, 2010
Here’s something. Imagine you live in a community where you are expected to pay into a fund that is used to meet various needs in the community - the upkeep of roads, salaries for nurses and teachers, and community hospitality, for example. Then it transpires that you are about to receive a visit from a [...]
Posted in Faith, Health, Human Rights, Religion on Dec 11th, 2009
I have long thought that it seems ridiculous that hospital chaplains should be funded by the NHS - not least because all other NHS care is allowed because of its evidence base and scientific sense, and because the religious bodies should pay the wages of their own staff. I recently wrote a piece expressing [...]
Posted in Health, Human Rights, Morality, Science on Dec 9th, 2009
The Merseyside Skeptics Society have produced the following open letter which I re-publish below in full:
An Open Letter to Alliance Boots
The Boots brand is synonymous with health care in the United Kingdom. Your website speaks proudly about your role as a health care provider and your commitment to deliver exceptional patient care. For many people, [...]
Would you rather have your leg ulcer dressed by a non-graduate, skilled, caring practitioner who knew what she or he was doing, or by a graduate who didn’t? I have mixed feelings about recent proposals to make nursing an all graduate profession.
I can find three arguments in favour or introducing compulsory graduate status. First, as [...]
Posted in Health, Human Rights, Humanity on Nov 1st, 2009
The UK National Health Service (NHS), of course, like Mum’s cooking and apple pie, is wonderful. In times of crisis its nurses and doctors will deal gently and compassionately (if not always as speedily as you would like) in A&E, and will mend broken bones, replace hips, insert stents after heart attacks and perform countless other seeming miracles in [...]
Posted in Existential, Health, Humanity, Therapy on Oct 13th, 2009
I recently attended a two-day gathering of several hundred people. This large group could be divided into several sub-groups, with each sub-group thinking that they were the ones who were right, they had the real truth, they were the ‘pure and faithful ones’, they were the ones who could ‘really help’. You would think [...]
Posted in Education, Health, Human Rights, Humanity, Morality, Relationships, Religion on Jul 28th, 2009
Despite what the (American) religious right may teach, just saying “No” to yourself doesn’t always work.
Many of us already knew that, but it’s now official. The truth is out at last – abstinence-only programmes make the situation worse. To the surprise of few, it has recently emerged that George W. Bush’s “abstinence only” [...]
Posted in Faith, Health, Human Rights, Morality, Religion, Society on Jul 15th, 2009
I know. It’s easy for me. I’m a man. I don’t have to wear the things. My gender is the one that has largely tried to dictate over the centuries how women should dress. I write what I am about to write with appropriate trepidation and guilt.
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