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Monthly Archives: July 2007

The Dude

27-Jul-07

Jeff Bridges on the The Big Lebowski:

It’s not like he’s a know-it-all, the Dude. He’s not a guy who has figured out the way to be or anything like that, but he is comfortable with what he’s got, and, as the Stranger says, things turn out pretty well for him. I guess we can all [...]

Quote of the day

26-Jul-07

“If I am wrong I will be a bad person because I will have raised this spectre.”
Andrew Wakefield, March 3, 1998. Interview in The Independent.

Rigid plans are not good

26-Jul-07

I once spent a frustratingly long time sat in a tent in Zermatt on a very limited budget, wishing that the weather would change so that conditions would be right to climb the Matterhorn. The only entertainment was reading a book about the Russian Revolution and drinking the occasionally exorbitantly priced can of Heineken Lager. [...]

Recent Publications

26-Jul-07

Recent paper:
Cox AR, Gilmartin B. Drug-induced opthalmic adverse reactions. Adverse Drug Reaction Bulletin 2006;241:923-926.
And a book chapter (the proof reading of which I mentioned here) :
Langford NJ, Cox A. Interactions between Antihypertensive Drugs and Other Medications. In: Comprehensive Hypertension. Editors: Lip GHY, Hall JE. Philadelphia, Mosby Elsevier; 2007. 1075-1086
You can buy Comprehensive Hypertension at Amazon.
Here [...]

Petition for Iraqi Employees

25-Jul-07

Petition for Iraqi employees of British Army
The Iraqis who have been working for the coalition forces as translators and in other capacities are in danger from death squads which have been hunting them down. Surely we have a responsibility to attend to the well-being of these people and their families as our military presence in [...]

Benghazi Doctor “disappointed”

25-Jul-07

While it remains to be seen what deals have been done behind the scenes to obtain the release of the medical staff who have been held hostage in Libya, it is still good news that they have been released. Reporting focused on the Bulgarian staff involved, and the anti-Western sentiment that was stoked up by [...]

Benghazi six – free at last

24-Jul-07

The five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian-born doctor (given Bulgarian citizenship recently) jailed because of an allegation that they deliberately infected children with HIV, a charge which they were almost certainly innocent of, have been freed.
They have been in prison since 1999 living under a death sentence, and suffering torture at the hands of [...]

The Observer – journalistic standards fall further

22-Jul-07

The Observer has attempted to cover themselves over the inaccurate autism-MMR story of two weeks ago.
Go and read Mike Stanton’s and Ben Goldacre’s posts on this inadequate “clarification”.
See also:

Observer Gives a PoMo Clarification: Retract Already
More terrible Observer MMR coverage

Medical Journals, democracy, and public health

18-Jul-07

Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, defending his decision to publish the Wakefield paper on MMR vaccine:
Creating the conditions for a resurgence of measles is bad medicine. Or is it? Good medicine, by this definition, means forcing families to immunize their children with the MMR vaccine. Fortunately, we do not yet live in a police [...]