This post is mostly Peter Selley’s.    Covid flooded us with talk of immunity and vaccines. The word vaccine was redefined so mRNA agents could be called vaccines, even though they do not confer immunity or stop transmission as traditional vaccines do. The RSV vaccines are the latest. Given to older folk, they meet traditional definitions of a vaccine. Maternal RSV ‘vaccines’ given to mothers while pregnant act like a traditional vaccine for the mother – who doesn’t need an RSV vaccine – but not for her child.  The child gets passive immunity from antibodies the mother makes bu ..read more

The post follows on from last weeks Zen and Art of Psychopharmacology and links with Potentially Inappropriate Deprescribing PID on RxISK.  Tullio Giraldi and I first e-met in 2009.  Introducing himself, he painted an unusual background.  He had been a pharmacologist but now his interests lay in Buddhism and psychotherapy.  I learnt later that he was an enthusiastic sailor competing at a very high level in big boats. Tulio was based in Trieste, where Franco Basaglia let the winds of change blow through a mental health system. For millennia before Basaglia, Trieste was famo ..read more

This post outlines an article that will appear in the next issue of Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry – Zen and the Art of MoodCycle Maintenance – borrowing from the title of a semi-philosophical book with Zen and MotorCyles in its title that was well-known when some of us were young.  The full article with references and footnotes will be published imminently.  It’s also a chapter in Practical Alternatives to the Psychiatric Model of Mental Illness – a book with lots of great chapters edited by Arnold Cantu. The Rising Sun In 1997 I was invited by Pfizer, who were attempting ..read more

Assuming things around 1998 in the graph below were what most of us would have figured until recently was what normal should look like – by that I mean as we might have expected things to be – there has been a dramatic change since 1998.  See Conspiracy of Silence.  No one, until recently, would have expected teens to be collecting disability payments and the rate of disability in people under 35 to escalate to the point where it outstripped disability in middle age. Something has happened.  If the something began with the 18-30 year olds here, then it may have begun between 19 ..read more

This graph recreates history. In Britain by 1935, Fertility Rates had fallen below 2.1 – the number of children women have on average – 1.8 and stayed there. The national replacement rate is 2.1. Given the steep slope down from 5.0 to 1.8 over less than 50 years, there is little reason to think in the ordinary course of events that Fertility Rates were likely for any obvious reason to pick up. The continuous half-century long downward trend seems more likely to strengthen the case some make that declining fertility is linked to pollution rather than greater freedom for women to choose not to ..read more

There is a core concept shaping the ‘market’ in health, the concept of an assay. Few doctors or patients understand it. This article explains what assays are, how they entered healthcare and the consequences of failing to grasp the role they play. This post by Harriet Vogt and David Healy is an illustrated version of a peer-reviewed citable academic article Randomized Controlled Assays: A Category Error with Consequences that like the illusions below will look instantly obvious to some but impenetrable to others. Thanks to Bob Whitaker it has also appeared on Mad in America and the article ti ..read more

I was staying in Aubervilliers last November for a “Whistleblowers” Lanceurs d’Alerte conference. Aubervilliers is in the North-East of Paris – not one of the tourist areas. Some French friends suggested the reason Paris was hosting the Olympics was because it offered the authorities an opportunity to flatten that part of the city and regenerate it – clearing out the undesirables. The conference was in the nearby Maison des sciences de l’Homme, whose métro stop is Front Populaire. The station name hints that this district was once at the heart of Parisian socialism. The hotel was on Rue de la ..read more

AiDA – Assistance in Dying Altruistically – featured in Liberty Equality and Fertility.  Here’s AIDA’s picture. It likely depends on your mood as you look at the picture.  She might make an AiDA option look attractive or add to its horror.  Some people, particularly mothers, can be extraordinarily altruistic, and might think they could sacrifice themselves for the good of their children or grandchildren. Others may well feel that a superficially caring end of life option just adds to the horror of our slide down a slippery slope. The AI in this AIDA stands for Artificial Intell ..read more

This post is partnered with a Timeline on Sex, Fertility, France and Serotonin on RxISK MAiD I am on a listserve that includes Trudo Lemmens a vocal opponent of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in Canada. Canada seems to be going about MAiD particularly enthusiastically. Quite apart from Trudo being a long standing friend, I am impressed with the coherence, morality and passion of his position. There are others on the listserve like Jack Noble, mentioned some posts back, who have had brushes with serious illness and eloquently expressed a wish to have some control over the manner and timing ..read more

This post centers on one member of our twin greatest problems – the changing climate of healthcare – as do HealthCare Gone Mad and Pharmageddon and Fertility., and older posts – Healthcare and the Global Climate and all posts in the Politics of Care Forum. There are linked posts on RxISK.org, starting with The Cradle of Civilization and forthcoming posts on A Sex and Fertility Timeline and Fertility Zone. Pharmageddon Charles Medawar created Pharmageddon, the concept and the word, around 2006. He explains it in this 2010 Conference Lecture.  Pharmageddon is changing the health and human ..read more