This website is intended for healthcare professionals
This website is intended for healthcare professionals
Freelance writer; Fellow of the Institute of Biomedical Science
Philosopher Mary Midgley (1992: 3) observed: ‘As the gap between professional science and everyday thinking widens, it gets increasingly hard to work out in what sense most of us can be said to be...
According to Holroyd (1971: 628), in March 1916 the author Lytton Strachey attended a tribunal, seeking exemption from conscription on the grounds of conscientious objection (CO) He was asked by a...
‘The scaling up of breastfeeding to a near universal level could prevent 823 000 annual deaths in children younger than 5 years and 20 000 annual deaths from breast cancer’ (Victora et al, 2016: 475)...
‘Smoking during pregnancy can cause serious pregnancy-related health problems These include complications during labour and an increased risk of miscarriage, premature birth, stillbirth, low birth...
Earlier this year, Dr Amir Attaran (2016) demanded that the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games ‘be postponed, moved, or both as a precautionary concession’ against the spread of Zika virus (ZIKV) He...
According to Germaine Greer (1985: 6), ‘from conception, pregnancy is regarded as an abnormal state… an illness, requiring submission to the wisdom of health professionals and constant monitoring, as...
Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) is a relatively recent development, based on the detection of DNA fragments in maternal serum Up to 20% of these fragments are fetal DNA shed from the placenta,...
Dobelli (2013) cites an experiment in which a supermarket displayed 24 flavours of jelly, which customers could taste and then buy at a discount; the next day, the experiment was repeated with six...
Last year, at the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts, feminist icon Germaine Greer scolded gay parents Sir Elton John and David Furnish for naming Furnish as the mother of their two sons on the...
Despite all the evidence that breastfeeding is best for babies, many people still hold negative opinions about it For example, Kathryn Blundell—then deputy editor of parenting magazine Mother &...
According to Skouteris (2012: 664), citing a survey of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, ‘body image concerns are largely ignored by physicians working with pregnant women’...
In 2010, marathon world-record holder Paula Radcliffe finished a 10 km charity run while 7 months pregnant In 2011, Amber Miller completed the Chicago Marathon in 6 hours 25 minutes, and 7 hours later...
In September 2015, it was reported that researchers at London's Francis Crick Institute (2015) had sought permission from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to use so-called ‘gene...
‘We can't change the past but this vaccine will change people's futures’ These were the words of Kelly Mellor, whose daughter contracted meningococcal disease when she was 11 months old, quoted in a...
In May 1847, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818–1865) showed by experiment that handwashing could prevent infections (Noakes et al, 2008) He instigated a hand-washing regime at the maternity clinic of the...
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