The current issue of the Royal Society’s journal (Philosophical Transactions) is devoted to geo-engineering. That is, very large scale engineering projects aimed at combatting global warming. For example, one proposal is to release su…

Victorian politicians are debating how to reform law on abortion. In Victoria, as in other states, abortion remains a crime. This is inconsistent with what happens. There are nearly 100 000 abortions every year in Australia. The Victorian g…

After a prolonged disagreement with patient groups, the NHS’s funding guidance body, NICE, has approved the £10,000-an-eye blindness treatment, Lucentis. The drug has been shown to halt the progression of wet age-related macular degen…

The last few years have seen some very bad droughts. In the UK, the drought of 2004-2006 was severe enough to nearly require the shutting down of domestic water in London and the fetching of water from public wells (called standpipes). Aust…

A recent survey by Myeloma UK, and reported on the BBC website, suggests that many doctors do not tell patients about drugs that may be beneficial and which are licensed in the UK. The trouble is that the drugs have not yet been approved by…

I wrote recently about the controversial news that surgeons in Denver had taken organs, including the hearts, from newborn infants who had died in intensive care. In recent years the retrieval of organs from patients whose hearts have stopp…

Studies of the content of dreams confirm what most of us already suspect: dreams are more likely to be nasty than pleasant, or as the researchers put it, “negative dream contents are more frequent than corresponding positive dream contents”…

You might think after Usain Bolt’s almost superhuman performances in the 100 and 200 m that the war on doping has been won. However winning one battle is not winning the war. As the example of Lyudmila Blonska shows, doping is still occurri…

A new worry has hit parents: digital drugs. The idea is that sounds can affect brain states, so by listening to the right kind of sounds desired brain states can be induced – relaxation, concentration, happiness, PMS relief or why not…

In the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday, doctors from Denver reported on three controversial cases of heart transplantation from newborn infants. These cases are striking for several reasons. They were examples of so-called ‘donati…