Medicine
A dose of good sense
Each year the Reith Lectures come round as Radio 4’s annual assertion of intellectual authority, fulfilling the BBC’s original aspiration…
The parlour-game approach
A group of retired Somerset farmers were sitting about in the early 1960s, so Ian Mortimer’s story goes, debating which…
Get rid of the GMC
Its licensing system has turned doctors into full-time form-fillers
Barometer
Not in their name The BBC decided to start calling the Islamic terror group Isis by the acronym IS instead.…
Does social work work?
The appalling abuse in Rotherham suggests it does not
When brave is better than good
Oskar Morgenstern grew up in Vienna, John von Neumann in Budapest. Clearly the same Austro-Hungarian intellectual spirit which gave rise…
Life after Aids
In the West, the deadliest thing about HIV may now be the stigma
Would you let parents destroy ‘gay’ embryos?
Because I’d like to have a child, and I’m getting on a bit, my husband and I have spent time…
Herodotus on 111
The NHS 111 line, designed to deal with problems that do not count as emergencies, is in financial and organisational…
Bring on the winged kelp
On 14 April each year, nori fishermen gather on a hillside overlooking Ariake Bay on Kyushu in southern Japan to…
