You may remember me telling you about making new plays with almost a dozen surgeons - it's the first time professional London theatre has attempted such a collaboration. We open at The Old Operating Theatre, Britain's oldest operating theatre, in April. In the face of pressure from funders to make more art from science, we've decided to turn our venture on its head and launch with a debate at The Royal College of Surgeons (followed by a drinks party, natch) at 6.45 pm, 22nd March.
Aren't Science and Art different but equal? Does adding them up only dumb them down? Can the new medium of 'sci-art' produce high art or good science or weaklings that are neither? Author Don McRae ('Every Second Counts' is the story of the race for the first heart transplant), scientific playwright Jack Klaff, TLS editor Michael Caines and philospher Hilary Lawson will argue against the public, surgeons and artists. If you fancy adding your brain to the mix, get tickets at www.metalandbone.org (EVENTS).
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Medical Humanities Society - Get Involved
The Medical Humanities Society is Imperial College School of Medicine's only book and film club. Although not a Union Club, we are recognised by the Medic’s Clubs and Socs Committee. We are an informal free book and film club that meets monthly to watch films and discuss books of medical relevance. We aim to provide access to Medical Humanities for all, whether medical or not.
An AGM will be held on Thursday 5th April along with the Medical Humanities Society’s next film showing, The Motorcycle Diaries. The meeting will be room S303A in the new Humanities area,Sherfield Building
We will decide next year’s committee and any suggestions you have for the Society – please come along!
An AGM will be held on Thursday 5th April along with the Medical Humanities Society’s next film showing, The Motorcycle Diaries. The meeting will be room S303A in the new Humanities area,
We will decide next year’s committee and any suggestions you have for the Society – please come along!
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
The human touch
An ESRC-funded study called Bodies Online looked at how people access health information on the Internet. The story was covered by BBC News online.
The study found that participants developed trust in web material over several stages and quickly dismissed poorly designed sites, sites with ads and general portals. While people looked for credible and impartial information, they were also highly influenced by personal stories to which they could relate.
In common with other studies, the participants used the Internet to prepare for visits to their GP. Yet the results also suggested that legitimate sources of information - such as NHS sites - were less likely to be used because they were hard to access and lacked input from others sharing similar concerns.
As the Internet is not going to go away, and is likely to be accessed increasingly by those seeking medical advice, I believe this report underlines the importance of providing health information in an understandable way as well as in specialist terms - putting the humanity into medicine, so to speak.
The study found that participants developed trust in web material over several stages and quickly dismissed poorly designed sites, sites with ads and general portals. While people looked for credible and impartial information, they were also highly influenced by personal stories to which they could relate.
In common with other studies, the participants used the Internet to prepare for visits to their GP. Yet the results also suggested that legitimate sources of information - such as NHS sites - were less likely to be used because they were hard to access and lacked input from others sharing similar concerns.
As the Internet is not going to go away, and is likely to be accessed increasingly by those seeking medical advice, I believe this report underlines the importance of providing health information in an understandable way as well as in specialist terms - putting the humanity into medicine, so to speak.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Doctor's Protest March
On Saturday 17th March there is an organised march in protest of the national shortfall of jobs for doctors at ST (Specialist Training) level orchestrated by the new application system 'Modernising Medical Careers'.
RemedyUK, the organiser of the march, is 'A movement of doctors which has lost complete confidence in the implementation of training reform and in employment strategy in the NHS.
We aim to reclaim strength in voice and in action which has been lacking in recent years.'
Their stated aims are:
There has been much debate about the system on sites such as Doctors.net and Facebook by medical students and doctors alike. There has also been confusion regarding the aim of the march - with some believing the march is about the way doctors apply for jobs (via MTAS, the Medical Training Application System), rather than being about the shortage of jobs for those entering Specialist Training.
You can read this article in Medical Student newspaper, written by a representative from RemedyUK that explains the problems - namely that for 28,000 doctors there are only 22,000 jobs, and with each doctor costing £250,000 to train, it represents a cost of £1.5 billion in wasted medical education, not to mention the personal issues for those involved.
This schematic from the MMC website shows the training routes for doctors. More information can be found here.
RemedyUK, the organiser of the march, is 'A movement of doctors which has lost complete confidence in the implementation of training reform and in employment strategy in the NHS.
We aim to reclaim strength in voice and in action which has been lacking in recent years.'
Their stated aims are:
- Immediate independent review of NHS workforce planning in the next 2 years.
- Removal of barriers for any doctor to apply for any ST post regardless of experience in the future.
- Expansion of training post numbers.
There has been much debate about the system on sites such as Doctors.net and Facebook by medical students and doctors alike. There has also been confusion regarding the aim of the march - with some believing the march is about the way doctors apply for jobs (via MTAS, the Medical Training Application System), rather than being about the shortage of jobs for those entering Specialist Training.
You can read this article in Medical Student newspaper, written by a representative from RemedyUK that explains the problems - namely that for 28,000 doctors there are only 22,000 jobs, and with each doctor costing £250,000 to train, it represents a cost of £1.5 billion in wasted medical education, not to mention the personal issues for those involved.
This schematic from the MMC website shows the training routes for doctors. More information can be found here.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Midsummer's Night Scream
You're unlikely to see a more curious juxtaposition of stilettoes, graffitied rubbish bags and stupendous paper modelling than those currently featuring in the ICSM Drama Society's production of 'My Parents the Eco-Warriors'. The play, by Martin Bailey and Richard Moss, is a loose yet recognisable rewrite of 'Midsummer's Night Dream'. What happens when a pharmaceutical developer turns bad? Why, unregulated clinical trials of love drugs of course! The resulting sexual shenanigans in the forest come as no surprise. Less predictable is the set-piece at the end of the show involving a full-on parody of 'Top Gun'.
The props, many of which were handcrafted, were impressive, if somewhat unevenly distributed amongst the cast. There was a mind-bogglingly well-fitted tool kit for anyone wanting to do a bit of DIY, but poor old Pooja had to mime cleaning the floor!
Delivered by a well-rehearsed and sizeable cast, there were plenty of laughs, particularly for the gender-bending fairies (played by -- I hope I've got this right -- Jamie Willson, Hisham Harb, James Corbert and Naren Govinderajah). Dominic Teichman playing Bottom had a big part (no pun intended!) and was either word perfect or a very good improviser. Ania Barling and Ciara Abbot's 'chavs' were scarily convincing. Ricky Stanton as Swampy was hilarious with his Russell Brand accent and delivery. Taz Rashid as the Bollywood-wannabe Pooja showed real star quality -- watch out Meera Syal. It was obvious that the cast was having a complete blast and the enthusiasm was infectious.
The show runs until Friday 2 March, performances start at 7.30 pm in the Union, Beit Quad, South Kensington campus, Imperial College London. It costs £4 for Imperial students and £6 for other species.
The props, many of which were handcrafted, were impressive, if somewhat unevenly distributed amongst the cast. There was a mind-bogglingly well-fitted tool kit for anyone wanting to do a bit of DIY, but poor old Pooja had to mime cleaning the floor!
Delivered by a well-rehearsed and sizeable cast, there were plenty of laughs, particularly for the gender-bending fairies (played by -- I hope I've got this right -- Jamie Willson, Hisham Harb, James Corbert and Naren Govinderajah). Dominic Teichman playing Bottom had a big part (no pun intended!) and was either word perfect or a very good improviser. Ania Barling and Ciara Abbot's 'chavs' were scarily convincing. Ricky Stanton as Swampy was hilarious with his Russell Brand accent and delivery. Taz Rashid as the Bollywood-wannabe Pooja showed real star quality -- watch out Meera Syal. It was obvious that the cast was having a complete blast and the enthusiasm was infectious.
The show runs until Friday 2 March, performances start at 7.30 pm in the Union, Beit Quad, South Kensington campus, Imperial College London. It costs £4 for Imperial students and £6 for other species.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Medical mavericks
A four-part series on BBC4, Medical Mavericks: The History of Self Experimentation, fronted by journalist and former medic Michael Mosley, has been presenting the ‘curious, gruesome and sometimes fatal ways in which scientists have transformed medical knowledge by using themselves as guinea pigs’.
In the best tradition of BBC documentaries, these programmes combine a heady mixture of biography, scientific explanation, medical demonstration, archive footage, location filming, dramatic reconstruction, expert comment, and, of course, self-experimentation.
In the opening programme, which dealt with the discovery of anaesthetics and their introduction into medical practice, Mosley was dosed up with nitrous oxide under medical supervision. He happily administered repeated electrical shocks to his arm while he giggled like a child. No wonder that laughing gas is addictive.
The second episode looked at the development of vaccines and the scientists who literally took their own medicine. Programme three, just broadcast, explored the links between food and health and described the extreme lengths to which pioneers in the field were prepared to go to prove their hypotheses about the role of diet in health and disease.
The series is both interesting and entertaining but suffers from its unhealthy focus on the stories of mavericks who tend to be exotic figures on the edge between madness and genius. The public will not be surprised that medics may be driven to the point of life-threatening arrogance but there are less extraordinary ways of doing good medicine.
The final instalment will cover the intrepid scientific explorers who injected themselves with rather nasty infectious organisms. It will feature Barry Marshall, the Nobel prizewinner who swallowed H. pylori to demonstrate Koch’s postulates in the only way possible without an animal model. I am not so sure that he would like to be in the company of some of the mavericks featured in the series.
An American dentist, Horace Wells, demonstrated the benefit of nitrous oxide by having a tooth removed while under the influence. This historical reference lets me finish with a joke that will prove much more painful. Did you hear about the yogi who had his wisdom teeth extracted without anaesthetic? He wanted to transcend dental medication. Ouch!
In the best tradition of BBC documentaries, these programmes combine a heady mixture of biography, scientific explanation, medical demonstration, archive footage, location filming, dramatic reconstruction, expert comment, and, of course, self-experimentation.
In the opening programme, which dealt with the discovery of anaesthetics and their introduction into medical practice, Mosley was dosed up with nitrous oxide under medical supervision. He happily administered repeated electrical shocks to his arm while he giggled like a child. No wonder that laughing gas is addictive.
The second episode looked at the development of vaccines and the scientists who literally took their own medicine. Programme three, just broadcast, explored the links between food and health and described the extreme lengths to which pioneers in the field were prepared to go to prove their hypotheses about the role of diet in health and disease.
The series is both interesting and entertaining but suffers from its unhealthy focus on the stories of mavericks who tend to be exotic figures on the edge between madness and genius. The public will not be surprised that medics may be driven to the point of life-threatening arrogance but there are less extraordinary ways of doing good medicine.
The final instalment will cover the intrepid scientific explorers who injected themselves with rather nasty infectious organisms. It will feature Barry Marshall, the Nobel prizewinner who swallowed H. pylori to demonstrate Koch’s postulates in the only way possible without an animal model. I am not so sure that he would like to be in the company of some of the mavericks featured in the series.
An American dentist, Horace Wells, demonstrated the benefit of nitrous oxide by having a tooth removed while under the influence. This historical reference lets me finish with a joke that will prove much more painful. Did you hear about the yogi who had his wisdom teeth extracted without anaesthetic? He wanted to transcend dental medication. Ouch!
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Crap on the telly
The New Year’s TV schedules are typically obsessed with obesity and health.
Channel 4’s contribution was a new series of You Are What You Eat, featuring the infamous Gillian McKeith and ominously subtitled Gillian Moves In. The format involved the self-styled holistic nutritionist scouring ‘the fat of the land’ to identify ‘supersize slobs’ with ‘thick hides’ and diets like ‘porky pigs’. She aimed to trap two unwary subjects in her TV home and then subject them to a draconian diet and exercise regime.
In the first programme, Ian and Sharon were confronted with a food-laden table showing the full horror of their weekly intake of salt, saturated fat, and monosodium glutamate. This gave McKeith the opportunity to swipe the stodge petulantly onto the floor and stamp all over it. Following further humiliations, the pair was sent home with ‘recipes, rules and reassurance,’ only to be visited again so that the ‘evil diet witch’ could trash the kids’ crisps as well.
McKeith has been the target of heavy criticism for advocating diets that have little scientific support, but there were only fleeting signs of such barminess here. On the contrary, the little information and advice she offered seemed modest in its claims. And after eight weeks, both inmates had lost two stones in weight. Ian could now play football with his son for more than a minute and Sharon was out shopping for sexy lingerie again.
McKeith is also well known for her obsession with crap. Her goal is the perfect poo: smooth, soft and easy to pass. For aficionados, that’s a type 4 stool – like a sausage or snake – according to the official Bristol Stool Form Chart. True to form, McKeith did not disappoint her fans as she duly inspected the captives’ disappointing and disgusting turds.
Shit was also firmly on the menu in the first of a new series, The Truth about Food, going out on BBC2. The series aimed to reveal the science behind the food we eat and what food does to our bodies. As the first of several well-known personalities slated to present the show, newsreader Fiona Bruce enthusiastically examined different aspects of food with the help of ‘top scientists’ and 'guinea pigs' plucked from a willing public.
Amiable truckers Don and Wolfgang demonstrated the importance of dietary fibre as they drove across Europe. High fibre replaced their conventional fare of greasy-spoon fry-ups and tinned food straight out of the can. The new diet helped the truckers get their transit time – the time food takes to traverse the tunnel between mouth and anus – from one to two days down to about 12 hours, helping to clear potentially cancer-causing toxins from the bowels.
The workings of the gut were further illustrated with the help of the ‘pill cam’, a neat piece of technology in the form of a large pill kitted out with its own lights, camera and video link. Swallow the pill and it goes with the flow, filming the sights on the way and showing us the delights within. There were also some helpful graphics to show the pill passing through the system. It was good science but as Don put it: “I can’t stop the truck every two hours to take a shit.”
The young ranchers working in Colorado, on the other hand, were more than happy to contribute their droppings as often as needed. One group dined on vegetables containing high levels of ‘prebiotic’ nutrients known to stimulate the proliferation of beneficial organisms in the gut. A second group ate ‘probiotic’ yoghurt containing live healthy bugs. Faecal analysis showed that the vegetables were better at increasing the good bacteria over the bad ones. The side effect of eating artichokes, leeks and onions was predictable.
Much farting and latrine humour was also evident among volunteers living in a compound at Paignton Zoo and surviving on 5 kg of raw fruit and vegetables daily, a diet similar to that enjoyed by apes in the wild and by our ancestors millions of years ago. Just 12 days of this unusual torture succeeded in reducing the participants’ cholesterol levels by more than 20%, a good thing given the role of cholesterol in heart disease, and it also reduced weight and blood pressure.
So, at the start of 2007, the couch potato had plenty of opportunity to cosy up in front of the telly - home-delivery pizza, bottle of fizzy rot, and remote control to hand - to ponder our pre-occupation with bodily functions and to imagine how good it would be to escape our modern, unhealthy way of living.
Channel 4’s contribution was a new series of You Are What You Eat, featuring the infamous Gillian McKeith and ominously subtitled Gillian Moves In. The format involved the self-styled holistic nutritionist scouring ‘the fat of the land’ to identify ‘supersize slobs’ with ‘thick hides’ and diets like ‘porky pigs’. She aimed to trap two unwary subjects in her TV home and then subject them to a draconian diet and exercise regime.
In the first programme, Ian and Sharon were confronted with a food-laden table showing the full horror of their weekly intake of salt, saturated fat, and monosodium glutamate. This gave McKeith the opportunity to swipe the stodge petulantly onto the floor and stamp all over it. Following further humiliations, the pair was sent home with ‘recipes, rules and reassurance,’ only to be visited again so that the ‘evil diet witch’ could trash the kids’ crisps as well.
McKeith has been the target of heavy criticism for advocating diets that have little scientific support, but there were only fleeting signs of such barminess here. On the contrary, the little information and advice she offered seemed modest in its claims. And after eight weeks, both inmates had lost two stones in weight. Ian could now play football with his son for more than a minute and Sharon was out shopping for sexy lingerie again.
McKeith is also well known for her obsession with crap. Her goal is the perfect poo: smooth, soft and easy to pass. For aficionados, that’s a type 4 stool – like a sausage or snake – according to the official Bristol Stool Form Chart. True to form, McKeith did not disappoint her fans as she duly inspected the captives’ disappointing and disgusting turds.
Shit was also firmly on the menu in the first of a new series, The Truth about Food, going out on BBC2. The series aimed to reveal the science behind the food we eat and what food does to our bodies. As the first of several well-known personalities slated to present the show, newsreader Fiona Bruce enthusiastically examined different aspects of food with the help of ‘top scientists’ and 'guinea pigs' plucked from a willing public.
Amiable truckers Don and Wolfgang demonstrated the importance of dietary fibre as they drove across Europe. High fibre replaced their conventional fare of greasy-spoon fry-ups and tinned food straight out of the can. The new diet helped the truckers get their transit time – the time food takes to traverse the tunnel between mouth and anus – from one to two days down to about 12 hours, helping to clear potentially cancer-causing toxins from the bowels.
The workings of the gut were further illustrated with the help of the ‘pill cam’, a neat piece of technology in the form of a large pill kitted out with its own lights, camera and video link. Swallow the pill and it goes with the flow, filming the sights on the way and showing us the delights within. There were also some helpful graphics to show the pill passing through the system. It was good science but as Don put it: “I can’t stop the truck every two hours to take a shit.”
The young ranchers working in Colorado, on the other hand, were more than happy to contribute their droppings as often as needed. One group dined on vegetables containing high levels of ‘prebiotic’ nutrients known to stimulate the proliferation of beneficial organisms in the gut. A second group ate ‘probiotic’ yoghurt containing live healthy bugs. Faecal analysis showed that the vegetables were better at increasing the good bacteria over the bad ones. The side effect of eating artichokes, leeks and onions was predictable.
Much farting and latrine humour was also evident among volunteers living in a compound at Paignton Zoo and surviving on 5 kg of raw fruit and vegetables daily, a diet similar to that enjoyed by apes in the wild and by our ancestors millions of years ago. Just 12 days of this unusual torture succeeded in reducing the participants’ cholesterol levels by more than 20%, a good thing given the role of cholesterol in heart disease, and it also reduced weight and blood pressure.
So, at the start of 2007, the couch potato had plenty of opportunity to cosy up in front of the telly - home-delivery pizza, bottle of fizzy rot, and remote control to hand - to ponder our pre-occupation with bodily functions and to imagine how good it would be to escape our modern, unhealthy way of living.
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