Skatje Myers, over at Lacrimae Rerum has written a very thoughtful post today about condoms, sex and 16 year olds. It is worth reading.
Category Archives: medical
Rejoice!
Yes, Rejoice! The Solstice is gone! From here on it gets lighter — though heaven knows it never feels like it until the end of February. But for those of use with SAD, the corner has been turned once more.
Friday Five: The only nasty thing I like
1. What’s the last movie you saw?
At the cinema: probably Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Pictures at an Exhibition in 1973. On TV probably some Lord of the Rings-ish thing last Christmas. See, I keep telling you I don’t do films.
2. Are you gentle?
Me? Gentle? Oh do be realistic, I’m about as gentle as a clumsy hippo!
3. Do you sleep with your bedroom door shut?
Nope, not at home, not usually even when we have people staying; we both hate shut doors. Tend to shut the door at other peoples’ (except my mother’s) but really only ‘cos most of them do. And when I was a student, although I shut my room door at night it was never locked, and often left ajar when I was in during the day. In this house shut doors are really only for one thing: to keep a cat penned in – and even so most of the doors can’t shut ‘cos there are things (like a pile of books) in the way.
4. What’s your middle name?
Cullingworth — my mother’s maiden name. Not many around and none now in my line of the family as my mother was one of four sisters. Cullingworth is a small village in Yorkshire, so the family come from there originally.
5. Friday fill-in:
I could learn to like not having to work to eat.
[Brought to you courtesy of Friday Fiver]
Friday Five: Attack of Randomosity
What is something you collect? Why?
I don’t really collect anything these days. Although I suppose you could count books. But the book collecting is fairly random apart from a couple of areas of interest, but even these aren’t collected fanatically.
If you could make one ice cream flavor, what would the ingredients be and what would be the name?
1. Avocado. If it could be made green enough then call it “Green Slime”.
2. Grapefruit, Clementine and Lime. “Citrus Burst”
What can’t you go a day without?
Sleep. Lots of sleep.
What position do you sleep in? [back, right side, left side, stomach …]
Difficult one. I prefer to sleep on my stomach and I usually (until recently) used to go to sleep on the right side of my front. But I need to (re)train myself to sleep on my back or side — I have Obstructive Sleep Apnoea which means I need a CPAP machine and mask at night, and sleeping on my front disturbs the seal between mask and face.
What is your typical morning routine before work?
Wake up. Try to ignore the day. Eventually get up. Shave (if going in the office), wash and dress. Breakfast (fresh fruit or muesli with fruit juice). Try to remember to take tablets. Work. All condensed into as little time as possible so I get the maximum time in bed. 🙂
[Brought to you courtesy of Friday Five.]
Microbes for Christmas Without Being Ill
So here we are. Just what every Just William schoolboy always wanted. Giant Microbes for Christmas. And you don’t get sick.
Thanks to a top off from Noreen it seems that quite a lot of gift outlets are selling soft toys this Christmas made by Giant Microbes. They have a wonderful array of bugs from Black Death to Syphilis by way of Typhoid and Ebola. They’re a snip at around ÂŁ6 or $8 each. Just the present for the young science geek.
But there is a serious point to this. The toys are actually made in the shape of the eponymous organism, only around a million times bigger. And they they come with information about the bug they depict. So they do have educational value. And some of them, like E. coli (pictured above), are actually quote cute.
Go have a look at Giant Microbes and give yourself the ‘flu for Christmas! (Well actually maybe not, it’s a nasty pastel apple green colour.)
Pornography and Rape
I today came across an year-old post on Greg Mankiw’s Blog where he points to an article by Todd D Kendall of Clemson University. In this Kendall shows that the more easily pornography is available to the male population the lower is the incidence of rape.
It is also worthy of note that many published studies (I need to look then up!) have shown that teenage pregnancy rates are far lower in open, relaxed societies like The Netherlands, and significantly higher in more religiously repressed and restrictive societies like the USA.
I find this interesting as I have always maintained that if we had a healthier understanding and acceptance of desires, sexuality, nudity and our bodies it would have far reaching positive effects on our health and our attitudes. Bring children up to understand their bodies, their sexuality and to accept nudity as something normal and they will be more balanced as individuals; more able to discuss their inner feelings and worries; more at ease discussing their medical problems with their doctor. All of which has to be good, if only in terms of catching serious disease earlier and when it is more easily, and more cheaply, treated.
Doctoring the Toilet
Spotted this notice in the toilet at my doctor’s surgery the other day. How to murder the language! Well it amused me!
Depressed
I’m tired. Horribly tired. Not coping. Don’t know how I’m managing to do anything. Having anxiety dreams. Depressed. Very depressed. Despite the anti-depressants. And it isn’t even winter when I know I do struggle. I don’t know why. Noreen says I’m doing too much; I’m always doing things which are “duty” and that I haven’t had a break in weeks. I guess she’s right, what with work, the Anthony Powell Society, sorting my father’s estate, and the trust, and my mother’s tax, and …
… and this weekend a very close friend died; the other end of the country. Well Victor was 82; he had heart problems and Parkinson’s; was old enough to be my father; and was my best man all those years ago. Although we talked only infrequently, I shall miss Victor; he was the nearest person I knew, probably ever will know, to being a true polymath. So now I must give time not just to his funeral (and that may mean taking the funeral service) but to his estate, because I am one of his executors, and I promised. (Oh and just as I did for his wife when she died a couple of years ago.)
But all I am doing is things which I have committed to do; it’s not as if I’m taking on anything new; but I still can’t keep up. At 56 I’m working harder than ever before, at a time when the system is no longer full of it’s youthful vigour – we none of us can do at 56 what we could at 26, leave alone at 16; simple biology.
So it’s no wonder I never get a break and I’m tired and depressed. And as Noreen also tells me I don’t spend any time “playing” – by which she means doing what I want to do, when I want to. How can I; there’s no time!
What’s the answer? A big lottery win so I can afford to retire? Sounds good. If only!
Mass Circumcision to Fight AIDS
Here we go! I did warn you.
There was a BBC News item yesterday under the above title tells of a mass programme to circumcise males in Africa because doing so reduces AIDS rates (in males!) by 60%.
Effectively they start by “offering” the procedure to all boys born in hospital. But how long will it before adult & adolescent males are being “offered” the operation; just as men in India were bribed into vasectomies some years back. I put “offering” in quotes because I have no doubt that the offer will be heavy handed and not exactly optional.
I find this type of attitude obscene in today’s world (no, any world). Mutilation of someone, for any reason, when they themselves cannot opt out is to me a violation of human rights and an abuse. The medical profession really should know better. There would be outrage if the equivalent operation was “offered” to females — indeed there is outrage, because it is done to females (tho’ not as an anti-AIDS measure).
Oh yes, and what about the women? Circumcising men does nothing to reduce the chances of a female catching AIDS from an infected male.
Come on guys. Let’s have some medical responsibility — in the round! A little holistic thinking. Let’s find proper ways to tackle AIDS and not resort to barbaric, medieval, mutilation. And let’s stop name-calling against those who don’t agree with you, too.
Circumcision and Morality
Two pieces I picked up from this week’s New Scientist. First a report of moves to “encourage” male circumcision:
New York is […] considering whether promoting circumcision among the city’s men might help limit the spread of HIV there. The procedure has worked wonders in Africa, cutting the infection rate by 60 per cent in circumcised Ugandans, Kenyans and South Africans compared with their intact compatriots. On 28 March, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS endorsed it as a means of reducing HIV spread.
So far […] the procedure has only been shown to work in Africa and in men who only have sex with women. So could a similar strategy work in New York, where sex between men and infection through intravenous drug use are more prevalent?
As this quote implies male circumcision isn’t just actively under consideration in NY but also in the whole of Africa. And now to female circumcision:
The painful and dangerous practice of female circumcision has been outlawed in […]Eritrea, where around 94 per cent of women are circumcised […] anyone who requests, incites or promotes female genital mutilation [will] be punished with a fine and imprisonment.
I appreciate that there is a difference of scale between male and female circumcision, but it seems to me there is a disconnect here. How can it be immoral to (seek to) mutilate female genitalia but yet moral to (seek to) mutilate the male penis?
Yes, OK, male circumcision may reduce the incidence of HIV amongst a defined section of the population: males who have sex with females without condoms. But it worries me that there is clearly going to be (political, medical and peer) pressure applied to men to get circumcised, and on parents to have baby boys circumcised. Worse I can see circumcision of male babies becoming an unquestioned part of perinatal care with parents not even being asked if they consent. And for adult men (at least in Africa) I can foresee the scenario there was in India some years ago where men were effectively bribed to have vasectomies. If I choose circumcision of my own free will, then fine. But how dare the medical profession, let alone politicians, decree that I must (or even should)? And how dare parents inflict it on a baby? If the same situation was being applied to women there would be the most almighty outcry — and rightly.
Let’s stand by our human rights and be very clear that all body mutilation (whether medically induced or not) which is not chosen of the subject’s own free will is immoral and (probably) illegal under international law.
When will politicians and the medical profession learn?
(Oh and by the way, no I’m not circumcised and I’m very glad my parents didn’t inflict it on me.)