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| Friday 23 December 2011 |
Saving medical practice from the tyranny of health
Dr Michael Fitzpatrick talks to James Le Fanu, the one-time scourge of those medical practitioners who blamed lifestyle or pollution for ill health, to find out if he really has made peace with the medical establishment.
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| Tuesday 20 December 2011 |
From revolutionary student to Byronic celebrity
Michael Fitzpatrick recalls his first meeting with Christopher Hitchens 40 years ago, when there was more to him than flashy posturing.
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| Monday 14 November 2011 |
Social democracy is dead. Now let’s move on
Across Europe, labour parties are reinventing themselves to stay relevant, but they’ve been redundant for decades.
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| Thursday 10 November 2011 |
Our society is hooked on harm reduction
We should approach the use and abuse of alcohol and drugs as a moral question, not as a clinical or legal matter.
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| Tuesday 18 October 2011 |
Note to NHS: stop treating the public with contempt
With nothing to say about the paternalism and authoritarianism of the UK health system, the Save Our NHS protests seem wilfully out of touch.
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| Monday 20 June 2011 |
Don’t tinker with the NHS. Completely rethink it
Why do both the right and left champion Britain’s health system when it remains inefficient, bureaucratic and sometimes inhumane?
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| Thursday 7 April 2011 |
Save our National Health Service? Why, exactly?
Given the contempt with which the NHS treats ordinary people, it’s no wonder they aren’t lining up with the ‘Save our NHS’ lobby.
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| Friday 25 March 2011 |
‘There's never been a better time to be autistic’
In the run-up to a speech in London, author Roy Richard Grinker challenges the idea that there's an autism ‘epidemic’ spread by ‘malign forces’.
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| Friday 4 March 2011 |
Meet the new breed of anti‑vaccine agitator
Meaner, cruder, more strident and possessed of celebrity clout – the modern anti-vaccine lobby has learnt how to make a splash
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| Friday 25 February 2011 |
The rise and rise of anti‑vaccine agitators
There have always been people opposed to vaccination, but the new anti-vaccine lobby is different: 'meaner, cruder, more strident' and possessed of great celebrity clout.
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| Tuesday 25 January 2011 |
The real lessons of the MMR debacle
It was a widespread mood of anxiety and hostility to reason that allowed an insubstantial figure like Andrew Wakefield to have such an impact.
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| Monday 15 November 2010 |
A futile intervention into our drinking habits
Just because excessive alcohol consumption can have medical consequences, that doesn't make it a Medical Problem.
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| Monday 16 August 2010 |
Apocalypse looms – again
Before you fall for the scare about antibiotic-resistant plagues, just consider how insanely wrong the authorities were about swine flu.
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| Tuesday 25 May 2010 |
Censorship is not the answer to health scares
The only way to challenge the pseudoscience of Andrew Wakefield and others is to have more debate, not less.
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| Wednesday 5 May 2010 |
Public health and the obsession with behaviour
ESSAY: Recent thinking on health policy has been driven by two myths: that bad health is caused by bad habits, and that government can promote good health by changing our behaviour.
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| Monday 1 March 2010 |
Turning a blind Eye to the truth
Private Eye’s feeble apology for its support for Dr Andrew Wakefield reminds us of the media’s uncritical complicity in the MMR-autism theory.
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| Tuesday 2 February 2010 |
The war on Dr Wakefield: only 12 years too late
Yes, Dr Andrew Wakefield’s MMR-autism theory was dishonest, but he’s not the only one to blame for the great vaccine scare of the past 12 years.
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| Tuesday 22 December 2009 |
A pandemic of fantasy flu
This year’s swine flu panic crowned a decade in which the gap between public-health scaremongering and reality was vast.
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| Friday 13 November 2009 |
The ‘McCarthyism’ of the anti-smoking lobby
Two new books expose how epidemiology has been used as a tool of propaganda in the war on tobacco, leaving little room for real facts.
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| Thursday 5 November 2009 |
Autism: moving beyond the quest for a cure
The author of Defeating Autism: A Damaging Delusion challenges both those who want to cure and those who want to celebrate autism.
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