Robert Campbell – Page 3 – Slugger O'Toole

Desmond Curran brother of murdered Patricia Curran reported dead in South Africa…

Robert Campbell on September 3, 2015, 11:18 am

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De mortuis nil nisi bonum In March this year I wrote a short piece about the murder in 1952 of Patricia Curran (here). Patricia was the daughter of a judge, the police investigation of her death was thwarted by the judge, a ‘confession’ was obtained from an innocent man who, in a travesty of the legal process, was found ‘guilty but insane’ and incarcerated in a mental hospital for seven years. This man was Iain Hay Gordon; no explanation was …

How feasible is a 7 day NHS?

Robert Campbell on July 19, 2015, 12:01 am

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So, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary for England and Wales, wants consultants to work a 7-day week, and is prepared to impose this. Simon Hamilton, the local Health Minister, agrees. This demand is based on there being 6,000 extra and unnecessary deaths (in England and Wales) when patients are admitted at the weekends. This assertion is questionable. Elective patients are admitted during the week, and not so much at weekends. Ancillary services in the community may be reduced at weekends; A&E departments …

Life, death and heartbeats…

Robert Campbell on July 2, 2015, 5:40 am

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The diagnosis of death is mostly straightforward; the medical practitioner looks for somatic, cardio-respiratory and neurological features. Clearly, someone with rigor mortis is dead. Someone with no spontaneous breathing, no heartbeat and no pulse, and whose pupils are fixed and dilated presents the classical features of death. This is usually enough to diagnose most cases of ‘death’, though as the Victorians had a morbid dread of being buried alive, the tradition of requesting a surgeon to open an artery persisted …

The Duties of a Doctor. Morality and conscientious objection…

Robert Campbell on June 30, 2015, 6:08 am

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Medical practitioners who wish to practice medicine in the UK must by law be registered with the General Medical Council (GMC). If you do not practice, you are not required to register. The GMC is a regulatory body which publishes guidance on the ‘Duties of a Doctor’. Much of this is about registration, and practice in general. In the Republic, the [Irish] Medical Council performs a very similar regulatory and guiding role today (here). The British Medical Association (BMA) is …

The blame game. What doctors can learn from pilots…

Robert Campbell on June 22, 2015, 1:09 pm

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You wouldn’t immediately think that airline pilots and hospital consultants, particularly surgeons have—had—much in common. Yet both are in positions of power and control, both are ‘authority figures’ with ‘God-like personas’. There’s one very large difference; the airline industry today operates a ‘just culture’, a ‘no blame culture’; is this the case in medicine? This was the subject of a recent BBC radio documentary, here. Airplane disasters make for sensational headlines; there is often a great loss of life, and …

A quick guide to carbon monoxide poisoning – the silent killer…

Robert Campbell on June 10, 2015, 8:46 pm

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All organic matter contains carbon which has the chemical symbol C. When burnt in the presence of adequate air, fuels such as wood, peat, coal, oil and gas produce carbon dioxide in the chemical process. There is about 21% oxygen in air. The chemical symbol for oxygen is O though in air it exists as O₂. Carbon dioxide has the chemical formula CO₂. If there is inadequate ventilation and therefore inadequate oxygen, carbon monoxide (CO) is formed. In the lungs, …

Thoughts on the Danish TV series ‘1864’

Robert Campbell on June 8, 2015, 6:05 pm

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BBC4 has been showing the Danish TV series ‘1864’ recently; the final two episodes were broadcast on Saturday night. The series began by recalling the First Schleswig War against the Prussians and which Denmark ‘won’, though the main action was centred around the Second Schleswig war in 1864—in which the Danes were comprehensively, humiliatingly defeated by the Prussians—and its aftermath up to the present. The series has several layers of themes; the awfulness of war, the effect on families; the rigid …

An honest discussion about the A-Word (Alcoholism)

Robert Campbell on June 5, 2015, 9:15 pm

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Following the recent death of Charles Kennedy, the former leader of the LibDem political party, two remarkable things happened. Firstly, all the tributes that I’ve read were nothing less than complimentary about him. It’s often necessary to ‘read between the lines’ of such political accolades to discover what the writer really thought of the subject; but this just doesn’t apply here. Gerry Lynch referred to him on Slugger, here, and mentioned Alistair Campbell’s blog piece (here). Now, I’ve never been …

If you pay for it, you are now a criminal

Robert Campbell on June 1, 2015, 9:22 am

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Clause 15 of Lord Morrow’s Anti-Trafficking Act came into force a few hours ago, here. This makes it a criminal offence to pay by money, goods or services, for sexual services in N Ireland. It remains legal to sell such services. Previously, it was illegal to buy sexual services from a trafficked person; now there is blanket criminalisation. The expressed intent behind the Act is to reduce or eliminate the trafficking of women into prostitution. Human trafficking is a complex …

(Over) Prescribing for the Masses?

Robert Campbell on May 28, 2015, 8:57 am

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Prevention, they say, is better than cure. Public health strategies have focussed on the provision of safe drinking water, safe sewage disposal and mass vaccination. These have greatly reduced death and illness from infectious diseases. Preventative strategies are now being taken further; your GP will ask ‘screening’ questions, and you might get an invitation for a mammogram or for a bowel cancer check. We’ve all heard about the need to eat five portions of veggies a day (unless you are …

‘A Defeat for Humanity’

Robert Campbell on May 27, 2015, 12:56 pm

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The Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin is reported in the media (Guardian, Irish Independent, Irish Times) today, 27 May, as saying that the ‘Yes’ vote in the recent Irish referendum on equal marriage was ‘a defeat for humanity’. He made this remark to reporters attending a conference in the Vatican. The fuller quote seems to be: This result left me feeling very sad but as the Archbishop of Dublin pointed out, the Church will have to take this …

The Modern Management of Heart Attacks

Robert Campbell on May 25, 2015, 12:44 pm

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A heart attack, or myocardial infarction, is an interruption of the arterial blood flow to the heart. Untreated, it will lead to the death of part of the muscle of the heart. The heart is supplied by blood from two smallish arteries, the coronary arteries; a blockage in one of these is a heart attack. The blockage is caused by a clot or ‘thrombus’ forming on a ‘plaque’ of cholesterol in the artery. Symptoms are classically pain in the centre …

Who was Robert Capa?

Robert Campbell on May 25, 2015, 8:30 am

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If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough. —Robert Capa On 25 May 1954, the distinguished war photographer Robert Capa stood on a landmine in Indochina and was instantly killed. Though a pioneer of war photography, he wasn’t the first such photographer to be killed. You may not have heard his name, but you have probably seen his photographs. He made his name initially during the Spanish Civil War: Death of a Republican Soldier During WW2 he landed …

Antimicrobial (antibiotic) resistance

Robert Campbell on May 19, 2015, 4:21 pm

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The control of infectious disease in the 20th century was very largely due to public health measures, such as vaccination programmes in the population, and to the use of antibiotics in the individual. In the past, lobar pneumonia was a major killer of otherwise healthy you adults; and the progression of this illness was often inexorable, unless with a rising temperature and rising delirium, the patient came to a ‘crisis’ with a sudden, marked improvement—the ‘crisis’ had passed. I have …

Electors, Prisoners and the ECHR

Robert Campbell on May 17, 2015, 3:34 pm

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There are complicated rules about who can and can’t vote, and who can and can’t be a candidate in UK elections. It also depends on the type of election, local, for Westminster or for the EU. I’ve put up a short and incomplete summary here—it’s already quite turgid enough, and I’m not going to repeat it. There are a couple of problematic areas. EU nationals who are resident in UK can vote, as a rule, in local and EU elections, …

The Lady with the Lamp

Robert Campbell on May 12, 2015, 3:39 pm

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She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow’s face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds. —The Times On this day in 1820, a …

Voting systems in the UK

Robert Campbell on May 11, 2015, 10:19 pm

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We’re used in the UK to the first past the post system (FPTP) for elections to the Westminster parliament; and in N Ireland we’re used to the single transferable vote (STV) for our local elections. There are a surprising number of other voting systems used for official business in the UK. Six systems are used by the public to elect members of parliaments or assemblies, or to elect single officials. One system is only used within the Westminster Parliament. 1 …

GE2015: The Autopsy

Robert Campbell on May 9, 2015, 5:16 pm

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When there’s something puzzling or suspicious or unnatural about a death, there’s an autopsy. Sometimes it’s obvious what happened, sometimes it takes time and tests to discover the truth; just very occasionally it’s not possible to determine with certainty the sequence of events. Before 10 pm on Thursday night, we were all wrong; and immediately afterwards, only John Curtice was right. He was so very right that Paddy Ashdown said he’d eat his hat, and Alastair Campbell said he’d eat …

A hung Parliament? What then?

Robert Campbell on May 5, 2015, 4:22 pm

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Opinion polls over the last few weeks suggest that no parliamentary party will have an overall majority in the Westminster parliament; we will have a ‘hung parliament’. What then are the consequences? Who will govern, and how? It’s useful to go back a few steps in the process. Each constituency votes for a member to represent them in parliament using the first past the post system; there is only one MP per constituency. The MP may be a member of …

The other Princess Charlotte

Robert Campbell on May 5, 2015, 10:29 am

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Towards the end of the 18th century, the succession of the crown exercised the mind of King George III, at least before he went mad. His eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, had contracted a marriage with Mrs Maria Fitzherbert which, under the terms of the Royal Marriage Act, was invalid. The King’s other sons lived in happy domesticity with their mistresses and natural children. The search for a suitable consort for the Prince of Wales was on. The choice …