Doctor and activist
29/04/2020
20 September 2019 VALI is the name the Centre for Disease Control has given to the new epidemic of lung disease that is putting young people in hospital on ventilators and has killed a few people. It is not clear what the problem is as there does not seem to be a common feature in […]
29/04/2020
15 November 2019 The battle continues. Here is an article telling how some academics run a little sideline in testifying that smokers understood the risks of tobacco as they smoked themselves to death. Needless to say the academics do not say much about their work. Years ago, Dr Ann Woolcock, founder of the Woolcock Institute […]
28/04/2020
I visited Lesbos, a Greek Island recently as a tourist. I stayed in a villa, did some snorkeling, strolled and ate and drank at restaurants on the beach. The villa owner was from a fishing family and told me about the refugees on the island. There had been a big influx in 2015, both from […]
26/04/2020
Dr Ben Ewald from the Hunter, who has been working with Doctors for the Environment has been lobbying for a Federal EPA and wrote a submission on the load-based licensing system, which is another name for polluters paying a levy per tonne of pollutant that they produce. There is some charge for each type of […]
26/04/2020
CT Scans increase the risk of cancer by 24% for one scan and 15% for each subsequent scan. This is based on a 2013 Melbourne study published in the British Medical Journal, which looked at people who had had CT scans at least a year before they developed any type of cancer. The method used […]
26/04/2020
Tonight’s 4 Corners is about the Royal Australian Air Force contaminating the groundwater around its bases with a fire fighting foam containing PFAS (Per- and Polyfluoro Alkyl Substances, aka Perfluorinated chemicals, PFCs). It made me think of my experience with pollution. I started off in treatment medicine, and saw all the harm tobacco did, so […]
26/04/2020
All governments are very concerned about the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as well they should be. The medical costs will be huge but as is being belatedly acknowledged the whole of society is to shut down. Most industries will stop. Few will work; nothing will be produced and there will be much less […]
26/04/2020
Sometimes we have little experiences that are wake up calls. We need to note them, and act on them. I have little to do with Centrelink. Like most North Shore doctors I assume it does its job, and also tacitly assume it has nothing to do with me. It wrote to me about 6 months […]
25/04/2020
Taiwan’s Response to COVID-19- not perfect, but better than anyone else’s. An article in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) of 3/3/20 outlines the effective approach that Taiwan took to the COVID-19 crisis, which is why they have so few cases despite their close proximity to China. It is instructive to look at what […]
25/04/2020
This perceptive article by Mike Seccombe in The Saturday Paper (11-17/4/20) details what disaster capitalists are doing to get mining under dams, fracking and revamps for coal-fired power up while Parliaments are closed and the world is distracted by the COVID epidemic. At the head of it all is the inimitable rorter, Angus Taylor, busy […]