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The Irish Medical Times Blog: November 2008

How many shots of espresso would it take to kill you?

Energy fiend has a helpful death calculator for you: how man of a certain type of drink would it take to kill you, based on your weight. It would take about 170 espressos to kill me. That makes me feel... Read more

Should doctors blog, or is it a violation of ethics?

Mexico Medical Student, a long-running and popular medical blog, defends the right of doctors to publish opinions and musings outside the context of peer-reviewed scholarship. Despite calls by some organisations for stricter rules about blogging ethics, a Medblogger Code has... Read more

Does rainfall trigger autism?

An American study has found that children who live in areas with heavy precipitation when they are under three years of age have higher rates of autism, as IMT has reported in Clinical Times. The study was published in the... Read more

German haematologist may have found cure for AIDS

A German haematologist may have found a potential cure for AIDS, though the cost and complexity of the treatment makes unlikely it will be tried on a large scale. The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. Hütter, a soft-spoken hematologist... Read more

Holistic medicine is important; homeopathy is a pile of...

Unprotected Text - a second-year med student and blogger in the UK - offers a lively and spirited critique of homeopathy, which he says has no place in medical school. "I personally believe that homeopathy is by and large a... Read more

Taoiseach and FF suffer in Irish Times poll; FG gains... Why?

The only news anyone is talking about today is the Irish Times poll that shows support for the Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil in tatters. It's no surprise to see the popularity of a sometimes-perceived-as-irascible Taoiseach plummet during a recession. What... Read more

And they say nobody ever publishes good news about the health service

Things are getting better in the Irish health service. Ireland climbed one spot in the Euro Health Consumer Index (download the .pdf), from 16 to 15. According to the latest rankings, there have been significant improvements in waiting times over... Read more

Health service taking a funding hit? Try a Big Red Ball

Here's a clip of a Thought Leader from Portland Oregon who's got the secret to business success. Health service not doing to well? Need more beds? Need more consultants, staff, etc.? Nope, you need a Red Ball. And you need... Read more

You know how they say we only use 10 percent of our brains? I think we only use 10 percent of our hearts

Alcohol reduces brain volume, IMT has reported in its Clinical Times section. “There was a significant negative linear relationship between alcohol consumption and total cerebral brain volume,” the researchers reported. While I've yet to see evidence that reduced brain... Read more

Should hospital management ask doctors before cutting services?

If I had a nickel for every time I heard a doctor, or an organisation representing doctors, complain that hospital management scrapped a service, or made significant changes to frontline services, without discussing the move with doctors, I'd have enough... Read more

Scientists have created a brain with stem cells (sort of)

Japanese scientists have used stem cells to create viable brain tissue, Brain Stimulant tells us. These researchers were able to create brain tissue of the cerebral cortex. "This is the first time that such a large collection of brain cells... Read more

Obama's first crisis: the White House dog

US president elect Barack Obama has decreed that one of the top criteria for a new White House dog was that it would have to be hypoallergenic, the Pet Care Examiner reports. His daughter, Malia Obama, is susceptible to allergies... Read more

Brian Cowen rides out the storm of protest over budget cuts

A 25-year-old surfer moments before a 12m wave nearly killed him.... Read more

Don't blink or you will miss the next great healthcare scandal

Are you bored after the medical cards victory? Too lazy to go marching to protest education cuts? Well, go here and tell Mary Harney that you want her to reverse the decision to axe the HPV vaccination programme. Please also... Read more

More patients than journalists submit FOI requests

IMT has just reported that 90.1 per cent of all Freedom of Information applications received by the Health Service Executive in 2007 were from patients. Out of about 4,000 requests in 2007, less than 4 per cent came from journalists.... Read more

IMT's US election coverage

Here's a sneak preview of IMT's one and only article about the US election, from the weekly Inside Back column: Hope, change, history, and other things that don’t exist As the world celebrates renewal in America - a country that,... Read more

How to get copulating in time for Christmas and 100 other reasons I dislike psychology

Proceptivity is, among animals such as monkeys, is defined as "behaviour by the female that incites mounting by the male." In humans, it's defined as "behaviour that leads to copulation and thus conception." Psychologists, who exist in a nowhere state... Read more

HSE blows 100 grand on a publication of its own press releases

Those of you who have read the HSE's internal newsletter, Health Matters, know that it's a largely self-congratulating publication designed to make HSE staff, strewn across the country and dogged by unfair headlines, feel as though they're part of a... Read more

What was the crisis at St Vincent's?

IMT recently reported that "eight new interim beds that had been promised for CF patients at St Vincent’s Hospital have been delayed because elderly patients had to be unexpectedly moved from the geriatric ward to a ward that had been... Read more