First published in the NASGP Newsletter in February 2018 Whacking moles may make you feel you are doing something, but it doesn’t solve the problem. Last year the malware WannaCry attacked IT systems worldwide. Microsoft wasn’t making any more money from their hugely successful Windows XP so to encourage sales of a new operating system …
Author archives: Judith Harvey
Singing in the Brain
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in April 2019 When words fail, music may find a way into a failing brain London’s Wigmore Hall is a temple of high culture. The audience is packed with musicians. Sometimes I feel I’m the only person who couldn’t be up there performing the work. But recently I joined …
Now Wash Your Hands
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in June 2019 A century after Semmelweis published his paper on reducing the spread of infection in maternity wards, his advice reached the Department of Health. In post-war Italy TB was still rife and notices in buses commanded “No Spitting”. In Britain in 1946 the message “Coughs and sneezes …
Sin City: the Redemption
First published: in the NASGP Newsletter in April 2018 The UK is losing the ‘war on drugs’. We might learn from Colombia as it recovers from decades of violence brought about by its illegal manufacture and export of cocaine. Twenty-five years ago Medellín in Colombia was the murder capital of the world. The city was …
Understanding Denial: a Visit to the Faroe Islands
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in June 2018 What can public health in UK learn from the Faroese tradition of whaling about changing cultural traditions? The Islands and the Whales is a documentary by lawyer-turned-filmmaker Mike Day. It isn’t simply about whaling in the Faroe Islands. It’s an exploration of the practical and emotional obstacles …
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A Viper’s Nest of Treasures
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in September 2018 Since the antihypertensive captopril went on the market in 1981 captopril has probably saved many more lives than have been lost to the venom of pit vipers from which it was derived. I’ve watched snake charmers capitalising on our fear of snakes, and I have observed …
Fringe Medicine
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in October 2018 Medics have a long-standing relationship with the annual August circus that is the Edinburgh Fringe. Medical students reprise their pantomimes as reviews. Specialty registrars mine their store of horror stories to test whether a career in theatrical stand-up would be more rewarding than a career standing …
Eating People is Wrong
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in February 2019 Recently, in Tromsø, the Arctic capital of Norway, I came across the name Carleton Gajdusek. That name took me back many years and halfway round the globe to a village in the Fore district of Papua New Guinea. A man is standing in the doorway of …
Getting under Your Skin
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in December 2018 Body Worlds is an exhibition of plastinated bodies. Where is the line between an educational experience and an exploitative show? As I was shepherded into a dimly-lit lift, I was expecting an exhibition designed to titillate and shock. How do you react to seeing a man …