Going to your British GP: another perspective

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“Does your GP let you talk about more than one ailment when you see them? Count yourself lucky if they do.  

“Surgeries across the country increasingly enforce a strict “one appointment, one problem” policy. I raised the issue on Twitter the other day and was inundated with responses. Among them was one from a mother whose daughter ended up in A&E with pneumonia after her doctor refused to examine her cough during a visit about depression. All agreed it was a crazy policy, given that conditions often involve a number of different symptoms, and that people can be shy about admitting upfront what’s bothering them.

“The problem goes back to the overly generous deal Tony Blair’s government cut with GPs in 2006. Very high salaries (“roughly twice what a French GP earns”) enable our doctors to live comfortably while working just a few days a week. Result? It can take weeks to see a GP and, even then, you’re rushed through. No wonder our survival rates for cancer, so reliant on prompt diagnosis, lag far behind many of our peers.”  (Allison Pearson, The Week, 21 Feb 2020)

My take: Perhaps I am lucky, but when I am in London and have to visit the GP I get wonderful treatment, and, since I am not exactly young, often for several things bothering me.  But then my National Health doctor clearly isn’t in it for the money.  Hordes of patients line up outside the surgery before opening time, and the waiting room is always packed.  So I need a lot more evidence before I forego my love of the National Health Service  (yes, the consultations are free) . The fact is that the disgraceful attitude reported by Allison Pearson (above) is probably not general and depends on why doctors go into medicine in the first place.  Most are altruistic.  Thanks, Doc!

Fish and parasites

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Fish are infected with 283 times more parasitic worms than they were 40 years ago. Anisakis worms can infect a variety of marine fish and squid, as well as whales and dolphins, and can be present in fish used raw for sushi.

Scientists analysed the abundance of Anisakis, or herring worm, between 1978 and 2015, gathering  data on the average number of parasites per fish from 123 studies – which included 56,778 fish across 215 species. They found a 283-fold increase over nearly 40 years.

Anasakis starts its life cycle in the intestines of marine mammals, is excreted into their faeces and then infects fish, small crustaceans or krill in the larval stage.If eaten by fish they go on to form a cyst in the muscle tissue of that fish. When the fish gets eaten by the marine mammal, the life cycle recommences.

Humans can also contract these parasitic worms by consuming smoked or improperly frozen fish The worm can’t survive inside us, and are unable to complete their life cycle there. But the presence of this parasite can still initiate an immune response in people that can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.  The good news is that the seafood processing industry and sushi chefs are skilled at spotting and removing these worms.

The reason for the increased abundance of the parasites may be linked to the rise in marine mammal numbers from the 1970s onwards after the introduction of protections against hunting. Warming seas could also increase the rate of Anasakis reproduction.  Minimizing the number of worms that people are encountering in their sushi dinner is going to become more challenging into the future as we get these increasing abundances. (New Scientist.  Donna Lu, Global Change Biology, DOI: 10.1111/gcb.15048).

My take: depressing  isn’t it?  Challenges everywhere you look, and still no toilet paper!  (I don’t mean to be flippant, but it seems that there is no end to the ways we are messing up our planet.  And we vote in people who don’t care).

 

Liberty and its mis-uses

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“America is the only country ever founded on an idea. The only country that is not founded on race or even common history. It’s founded on an idea and the idea is liberty. That is probably the rarest phenomena in the political history of the world; this has never happened before. And not only has it happened, but it’s worked. We are the most flourishing, the most powerful, most influential country on Earth with this system, invented by the greatest political geniuses probably in human history.” — Charles Krauthammer

Krauthammer may be right about the US, even twenty five years ago. But the US has now gone further than any other Western country in encouraging free-riders.  It has allowed the very wealthy to opt out of the obligations of citizenship altogether.  Income from capital is now taxed more lightly than income from labour, the rich now pay a lower rate of tax than school teachers.  Massive multinational operate from small islands with low tax rates, rather than in the western countries in which they operate.  Moreover, the rich effectively dictate to their own political party with massive funding (involving inevitable quid pro quo’s) and are deaf to the dangers facing the country: global climate change, a chronically expensive healthcare system with the worst health outcomes in the world, the rise of China, and a failure to balance the budget when the economy was operating at capacity before the corona virus appeared.

This is glaringly obvious to anyone who keeps up with the news.  Yet huge swathes of the voting population seem unaware that they are being ripped off – politically, financially and morally, and seem content with it, still living in the past.

 Were Epicurus among us now, I suspect he would consider moving to a country with a less toxic political system.  Peace of mind was, after all, his principal objective.

The wild animal trade in China

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Teams in China are racing to discover which wild animal at a Wuhan food market was the source of the corona virus:  snakes, pangolins or bats? We don’t know yet.

What is clear is how seriously China is now clamping down on the trade in wildlife. Recently, the country’s highest authorities enacted a permanent ban. “It is forbidden to hunt, trade and transport terrestrial wild animals that grow and reproduce naturally in the wild for the purpose of food,” says the new law.

 For decades, campaigners have been calling for an end to wildlife markets in China, where animals, including those that are sick or disease-laden, are kept caged, often in poor conditions and near to people. Animal welfare is reason enough to ban them. The markets were also home to the huge under-the-counter trade in illegal fare, such as shark fins.

However, there are risks that prohibiting the markets could drive the trade underground, making the situation worse.  After the outbreak of the SARS coronavirus, which, in 2002, also came from animals, legal markets were suspended, but people still bought wildlife on the black market and the virus still spread.  Research has found that bans by Chinese authorities on live bird markets amid the 2013 bird flu outbreak led to the spread of that virus to uninfected areas.The problem was that different provinces implemented bans at different times, meaning poultry prices would be dented in one area, motivating traders to move infected animals elsewhere. 

Fortunately, the new ban is on wildlife traded for food is different. It could encourage criminal activity, but if done well, it could limit the economic incentives that have seen some partial bans fail.  It may also kick-start a generational change, as children won’t grow up with the wild animal trade, the legal markets for which were never well-regulated.  Banning wildlife markets in China permanently won’t end the illegal trade but it will reduce it: a faint silver lining amid the crisis.   (an edited    version of an article by Adam Vaughan, New Scientist)

Rule by religious extremists? Bad for peace of mind!

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The weekly Bible study arranged by Capitol Ministries for members of Congress and President Trump’s cabinet, illustrates how entwined Christianity is with our government.  Attendees include the vice president, secretaries of state for education, housing and urban development, agriculture, and health; the head of NASA; Trump’s chief of staff; former labor and energy secretaries; and over fifty senators and members of the House (all Republicans).  If you want a taste of power and get ahead you just have to attend.

The organizer of the weekly study is Ralph Drollinger, who, up until a decade or so ago, was called a fringe zealot, avoided by the powerful in Washington. He is now a key figure, not just in attempting to push a conservative theology but in using religion for political purposes.

We think we have a secular democracy that would be approved of by Epicurus.  No!  What it is becoming, (or largely become) is an evangelical-dominated movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise, and denies climate change.  

This is not just politics; it is about the basics of living in America. In the past the country stood for fairness, reasonable equality of opportunity, and giving a leg- up to the poor and dispossessed, or, at least not making their lives and their jobs more miserable.

In the current crisis, we are all reaping what these evangelical power-zealots have sown. Epicurus did not believe in the gods (or, at least, he thought they were uninterested in mankind and spent their time chasing goddesses).  He was a believer in Greek democracy, equity, fairness and expertise.  If you are reading this you probably are, too.