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A MARKETING trend with cosmetics has been to label products as not having been tested on animals. This is to show the manufacturer is ethical and addresses the growing community concern about animal testing.
WHILE medicine is generally presented as being highly scientific, there is a reluctance to question fundamental assumptions once they have become ‘accepted wisdom’. When studies come out that do not confirm established practice, they are often buried or shouted down. I’ve recently come across two glaring examples of this; both challenge what we assume to be ‘facts’, and both received little attention because they go significantly against the ‘party line’. The first is the ‘fact’ that saturated fats in the diet are a major contributor to heart disease. We know this is the case and billions ...
I HAVE a confession to make. It seems I have had ADHD all my life without knowing it. I am therefore indebted to the people working on the DSM 5 who have proposed broadening the criteria to ensure that people like me do not miss out. I do not like reading instruction manuals. Every time I have bought a new car it has come with a thick instruction manual and I haven’t read a single one. Neither have I read instruction manuals for the DVD player we bought three years ago. In addition to this, a few ...
IN MEDICINE today, the epidemic is not enough (remember the obesity and diabetes epidemics?). We now must have crises. Hence the obesity crisis and the current flavour of the month – the mental health crisis. Crises are good for lobbying politicians, and so the mental health crisis has resulted in a big spend on an assortment of programs that involve just about everyone except GPs, who in the spendathon have actually seen a reduction in rebates for preparing those mental health plans. The figures are impressive. One in five Australians has a mental illness of some form ...
WHILE progress has clearly been made in reducing rates of heart disease in this country, figures for male health remain poorer than those for women, and public health messages seem to have less impact on blokes. Anyone who has not been living under a rock for 40 years knows that smoking, being overweight and not exercising are bad for your heart. There is no shortage of information out there and no shortage of ‘programs’, either. To paraphrase an old proverb, the question is not so much about how to lead a man to water but how ...