Category: Health

  • Preying on people with cancer

    The Cancer Act 1939 is one of the few pieces of legislation that outlaws pseudo-scientific medical bollocks. As Cancer Research explains: At its heart, the current incarnation of the Cancer Act is designed to protect cancer patients and the public from being bombarded with adverts for cancer treatments, from any source, including medical professionals, pharmaceutical…

  • The march of idiocy

    I wrote about the horrors of unvaccinated children the other day. This is a great example of the problem. The article is about Shanelle Cartwright, the wife of an Australian rugby player. Over 400-odd words it regurgitates nonsense she posted on social media, describing her refusal  to vaccinate her kids as a “controversial decision”. It’s…

  • Murderous delusions

    On Friday, hundreds of US parents protested against the vaccination of children. I liked the Huffington Post headline: Parents Protest For Kids’ Right To Suffer From Preventable Illness.  The protest was in Washington State, which is currently in the middle of a measles epidemic. The parents are trying to stop a bill that would remove…

  • Sage advice

    Women are being warned not to put herbs in their vaginas after a Marie Claire article suggested that they should use parsley to “kick-start” their periods. It’s easy to laugh, but it’s actually quite a serious problem: time and again magazines and online magazines aimed at women print deluded and sometimes actively dangerous health advice…

  • The kids are alright

    Wouldn’t it be great if, instead of the thinky thoughts of anti-trans columnists, we had some actual research into children, gender dysphoria and gender identity? Look what The Atlantic found! Since 2013, Kristina Olson, a psychologist at the University of Washington, has been running a large, long-term study to track the health and well-being of…

  • “It was my first taste of what it meant to have my freedom taken from me.”

    Helen Taylor is the author of The Backstreets of Purgatory, which is ace. She’s a hell of a writer, a genuinely lovely person and the writer of this heartbreaking piece about being sectioned. We were supposed to have one-to-one sessions where I told him what I was feeling. It was meant to help, to give…

  • Why are LGBT people so sad?

    Stonewall Scotland has published a worrying report: half of LGBT people have experienced depression in the last year, rising to 72% among trans people. More than half of trans people have thought about taking their life in the last 12 months. Here’s the thing, though. LGBT people are not more prone to depression or suicidal…

  • Nothing looks as good as money

    Amanda Mull has found the secret to perfect skin: be rich. That’s not to say you shouldn’t moisturise, keep hydrated or stay out of the sun. But the celebrity beauty secrets magazines are so keen to share tend not to include the best-kept secret of all: You can drink as much water and wear as…

  • Why we still need to talk about consent

    There are some truly terrifying numbers in a new survey on behalf of the End Violence Against Women Coalition [PDF document]. The study, of around 4,000 Britons, found that: 33% people think rape isn’t rape if there isn’t physical violence; A third of men think rape isn’t rape if the woman had flirted during a…

  • Dying for your art

    This is heartbreaking. Sculptor Gillian Genser has been slowly poisoned by the shells she used in her artworks. In 2015, I was diagnosed with heavy-metal poisoning. Doctors found high levels of arsenic and lead in my blood, the result of chronic exposure. The water where the mussels grew was likely contaminated from industrial waste, and…