Tessera

Dorries Rides Again

2012-01-26T15:03:00.009Z

This week, Nadine Dorries MP failed to get a second reading for her amendment proposing that abstinence teaching should be promoted in schools - but only to girls, which I covered here.

But there really is no getting rid of her.

Now the Government has been accused of pushing ahead with her plans to strip abortion providers of their role counselling women despite her amendment on the issue suffering a heavy defeat in the Commons last year.

MPs voted by a majority of 250 to reject the Dorries amendment in September. It was intended to make women to see ‘independent’ counsellors before they have an abortion rather than be advised by abortion providers like Marie Stopes International or the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.

Public health minister Anne Milton said just before the vote that the Government would try to implement the spirit of Dorries' proposal without the need for legislation. She said: "The Government supports the spirit of the amendments, and we intend to present proposals for regulations after consultation."

It now appears that this is exactly what has happened. It's almost enough to make you believe in Dorries' god.

Shadow public health minister Diane Abbott said she had walked out of a new cross-party abortion group set up by the Government to look at the issue of counselling following the defeat. She said: "I now believe the 'consultation' will be a front for driving through the anti-choice lobbyists' preferred option without legislation or a debate on the floor of the House."

The group has been considering three proposals:
:
The first would see abortion clinics, such as those run by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and Marie Stopes International, barred from providing counselling, and under a legal duty to refer women seeking it to an 'independent' service.

An second option is for voluntary registration. This would would mean any organisation offering counselling to women with a crisis pregnancy would have to meet minimum standards, and only use appropriately-trained counsellors.

The third option is to retain the current system.

As I wrote at the time, allegedly independent bodies of the kind promoted by Ms Dorries do in fact have a strong religious agenda and use a wide variety of manipulative, emotive and factually wrong tactics to talk women out of having abortions. I also wrote about how Ms Dorries manipulated facts in support of the amendment. Which is putting it politely.

For anyone who may have forgotten, this is the same Nadine Dorries who is on record as saying that her political blog is "70% fiction and 30% fact" and that "I have chosen the facts I wish to believe".

It's easy to dismiss her as someone with little influence who is easily ignored but her persistence and the apparent support of at least some parts of Government mean that she can't be ignored by anyone who cares about choice and women's rights. She really is the wasp at the picnic.

UPDATED 27 JANUARY
On Newsnight last night, Dorries and Abbott faced off. Abbott's performance was less than sparkling. Dorries made a few interesting points.

1. No abortion counsellor should have an agenda.

In theory, yes. But her idea of having an agenda is being paid by the state to do abortions, You might as well say that NHS dentists shouldn't be allowed to do fillings because they have a financial incentive. The film clip before the discussion showed so-called independent advisors with a strong religious agenda to put women off having abortions. She didn't address this.

2.Dorries says that counselling would mean 60,000 fewer abortions a year.

Her Government wants to cut Child Benefit. How does she envisage providing for these extra children? She has said this before but it's not clear where the figure comes from.

3. University-educated, middle class women who live in London are fine, they know what they want and where to get it. She is concerned for the 'vulnerable' others.

This implies that women who don't fall into her very narrow category are incapable of knowing their own minds or of dealing with what she calls a 'crisis pregnancy'. And, referring back to point 2, it would seem that there are at least 60,000 of them.

4. Dorries listed Frank Field as a pro-choice MP.
He backed her amendment so the choice he is pro would appear to be hers.

The Government says there will be a public consultation before any decision is made, possibly launched next month.

Wasps and the Evolution of Language

2011-12-23T17:15:00.003Z

Just like living things, language evolves - and sometimes in the same way. When a population splits into two isolated groups, both evolve differently. *

In the 11th century, the modern French word guerre was pronounced gwerra. When the word arrived in England (courtesy of the Norman invaders after 1066), it was effectively isolated from the original language 'population' among British speakers who learnt French. The word mutated and lost the G so we pronounced it, after a few more mutations, as war. Roughly: gwerra to werre to war. Dropping the E on the end of the word is a common mutation.

Mediaeval scribes often used signs as shortcuts. In the 11th century, the word for school was written and pronounced escole (compare with escuela in Spanish, also a Romance language - which means derived from Latin). Later, it was written with an accent at the start as a scribes' sign that there was an S after the E . It's now written école and the S has been dropped from pronunciation. But before that happened, it came over here as escole, from which we got school.

The circumflex was a scribes' sign with a similar purpose, for example hôpital and forêt were pronounced hospital and forest.

People in some parts of France, like Paris, sound the E on the ends of some words as a short UH as in uh-huh. More technically it's called a schwa. So école would be écol - uh.

In the 12th century, the modern French word guêpe was written guespe and pronounced gwesp. The English mutated it by dropping the G and pronounced it wesp and then wasp.

Sometimes words split into further separate speaker populations after the initial isolation to create a kind of sub-species. In some parts of England like the West Country where I'm from, the G of guespe didn't die off but the W did. As G is not hard when followed by E (as in gesture) and the final E of guespe was sounded as a schwa, pronunciation went gwesp - jesp- jespa and that's why we yokels call wasps jaspers.

What the connection is with the old song 'Oh Sir Jasper do not touch me' is not known.

*If you're a linguist, yes I know I'm simplifying and being a little elliptical.

A Christmas Ghost Story

2011-12-12T15:29:00.008Z

It's traditional to tell stories about ghosts and spirits at Christmas. Let's imagine it's a still, icy, night. Small things die silently in the dark and the light of the full moon glints on sharp, merciless teeth.

In 1990, consultant psychiatrist and hypnotherapist Dr Alan Sanderson M.B., B.S. (London), M.R.C.P., D.P.M., M.R.C. Psych. returned to clinical practice after years of 'personality research'. He found psychiatry 'still stuck in the pharmacological morass' so he came up with the Spirit Release Foundation (SRF) 'to train medical practitioners and others to help people who are troubled by spirit attachment'. The SRF's members 'share a belief in the primacy of spirit and the soul’s development through reincarnation' (although they claim not to be religious).

What might spirit attachment be? According to the website:

'A minority of those who die fail to make their transition from this physical world successfully. They become what is known as ‘earthbound’, because they remain mentally attached to the earth plane and so cannot progress. Reasons for this include a traumatic death, concern over some unfinished business or anxiety for a loved one on Earth. Attached spirits may manifest in a variety of ways. They may attach to a person, or to a place with which they were associated in life, that place becoming haunted'.

Basically, it's ghosts haunting buildings and possessing the living. Even though the therapy is aimed at medical practitioners (among others), there is no attempt at scientific evidence on the website. One practitioner does explain the mechanism on their own website: 'Everything in the universe is made up of energy, spirit release simply deals with energies most of us cannot see and for the most part are unaware of... Spirit Release is really all about how external energies can, on occasion, affect our energy system in detrimental ways'.

'Energy' is the alternative medicine practitioner's friend, an undefined, unscientific term to explain pretty much anything. It is not the capacity of a physical system to perform work. This 'energy' is not measured in joules, kilowatt-hours or kilocalories.

Diagnosis is hardly more scientific:

'Some of the more common symptoms of spirit attachment can be: lack of energy, memory disturbance, behavioural change, mood change, addictive behaviour, relationship problems and hearing disturbing voices. There may be bodily pain and other physical symptoms. The degree of attachment also varies. Some individuals are scarcely affected, while in rare cases the individual's body and mind have been taken over completely. There may, of course, be other reasons for the presence of these symptoms, which a practitioner should investigate'.

The range of symptoms is so vague and general that almost any condition can be ascribed to attachment. The caveat that there may be other reasons for symptoms has the appearance of responsibility but how many practitioners are qualified to diagnose symptoms - and then hand the patient over to medical care (thereby losing their fee)?

Why aren't doctors spotting that their patients are troubled by earthbound spirits?

'Spirit attachment is not uncommon and is often misdiagnosed because many practitioners are not aware of it and because the symptoms might fit a number of possible diagnoses. In some instances attachments exacerbate an existing complaint with similar symptoms. They may be the reason that recovery from a complaint is very slow.'

The implication is that trained doctors are getting it wrong with their insistence on using their medical training. Even if a patient has been diagnosed with a genuine medical condition, it could be made worse by spirit attachment. They really have covered all the bases.

How do they cure this terrible problem that no-one had heard of until the SRF came along?

'Spirit Release is a two fold process. Firstly it involves releasing earthbound spirits from their condition of attachment in a compassionate, non-confrontational way, by contacting the spirits and communicating with them. Spirit helpers are then called upon to move the spirit on to its rightful place in the universe. The person who has been affected by the attachment is also offered healing, counselling or other therapeutic help, including advice about psychic protection'.

So basically, they give the spirit a hug and call it a taxi? Once they've dealt with the dead, they help the living too -possibly because the dead don't have credit cards.

Pretty much anyone can be affected:

Spirit Release is also about 'freeing the ‘stuck’ aspects within ourselves that invite spirit attachment, which may involve looking at past-life patterns, ancestral karma and any difficult influences that stem from childhood or later life'.

This is their version of preventive medicine (or maximizing your market share).

Therapy takes two forms. 'The Interactive Approach involves putting a client into an altered state of consciousness, through a form of hypnosis, in order to allow any attached spirit to communicate safely through them. A dialogue ensues, in which the spirit is induced to leave'.

Hypnosis is a tricky process, it's very easy for an inexperienced or unethical therapist to plant ideas, deliberately or otherwise. There can also be issues with False Memory Syndrome. There is a huge amount of trust required - a patient is hypnotised and when they come round they're told that the spirit possessing them has been persuaded to move on. This treatment is open to considerable abuse, aided in part by the placebo effect.

Alternatively, the 'Intuitive Approach is made through the psychic awareness of the therapist who learns how to communicate directly with a spirit. This does not necessarily require the active involvement of the client. It may be practised directly or at a distance'.

There's no indication of what happens if the spirit doesn't want to leave. The process as described is very benign, very low-key and reassuring as if it's no more than having your ears syringed.

If you feel there's a spirit inside you, there's a list of practitioners in your area.

The SRF may be a small group but they shouldn't be too readily dismissed. For example, the SRF website also suggests that gender dysphoria could be caused by spirit attachment and that Spirit Release is an alternative treatment to gender realignment surgery. They are part of a larger movement ascribing a whole range of problems to spirit possession. The Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) who are mostly GPs believe that mental illness among other problems can be caused by possession. There have been exorcists working with the NHS for forty years, as I wrote about here and you can read another piece I wrote on exorcism here.

The main problem with both the apparently cuddly SRF and the much less fluffy CMF is that practitioners' world view is predicated on unseen entities, some malevolent, some misguided. They are creating a problem and offering a solution to people who could well be in a vulnerable state and in need of proper medical attention. Even if the SRF are just treating people with more money than sense, they are dealing with people's mental and possibly physical well-being. Although the SRF claim that they are not a religious organisation, theirs is the same mentality as the churches that use violent - and sometimes fatal - methods to exorcise people, whether these are African evangelical churches or both the Catholic Church and the Church of England with their trained exorcists.

It would be interesting to know what church exorcists make of these rivals. As with religions, they can't all be right with their competing world-views of demons versus disincarnate humans.

Another problem is that anyone with a few hundred quid to spare can become a spirit release therapist. It costs £30 a year to be a member of the SRF and the Foundation Course costs £210. There's a leaflet about the upcoming London one here.

This way of thinking also leads people to blame outside agencies for problems in their lives rather than either taking responsibility or getting medical help. It can create a dependency on therapists. There's a kind of contamination theory at the root of the SRF; they are making people believe they have been 'infected' and need to be 'cured' except that they're not talking about bacteria or viruses, but the dead- truly alternative medicine.

This is a Christmas ghost story with no Tiny Tim happy ending.

Happy Families?

2011-12-06T16:51:00.009Z

The Government is trying to rebuild society on the basis of a Victorian card game. But only a minority of people now live in a family like Mrs Bun the Baker's wife, Mr Plod the policeman or Miss Dose the Doctor's daughter

The Government's flagship free schools and academies have to sign up to strict rules introduced by Education Secretary Michael Gove to teach children the ‘nature of marriage’ and its ‘importance’ for family life and bringing up children.

Religious and political campaigners against gay marriage claim that marriage is only for a man and a woman and that allowing gay marriage would undermine the bedrock of society and destroy family life.

But now there is research by think-tank the Centre for the Modern Family (funded by Scottish Widows) which shows that eight out of 10 people describe their family set‐up as not the traditional two married parents and two or more children. Just 16% of people define themselves as part of this kind of family that the Government thinks is under threat.

Although the Government and religious campaigners might see it as their mission to repair society and restore their concept of family values, they are increasingly out of step with the people they claim to represent who are more likely to describe single‐parent, same‐sex, or unmarried couples as ‘proper’ families. 57% of people no longer believe that a couple with children needs to be married to be a family. 77% of people believe that single parents can be a 'proper' family and 59% believe that same sex couples can be a family.

The public doesn’t just disagree with the Government's image of a family. People feel alienated by the emphasis put on a ‘traditional’ model of family life. 22% don’t believe their family is valued by society and 18% feel judged because of their family set‐up while 52% claim the Government does not take their family set‐up into account. It should also be borne in mind that whatever high ideals are promoted, not everyone gets to choose their circumstances, especially when times are hard.

NSS President Terry Sanderson said in The Telegraph: "For children brought up by unmarried parents or single parents being told that marriage is the only valid family arrangement will be totally contradictory to everything they know about the world. It is telling our children that their own family structure is somehow inferior."

However, both the Government and ‘traditionalist’ religious groups are very good at ignoring data that don’t suit their agenda and carrying on regardless. No matter how many statistics are thrown at them, it's water off a self-righteous duck's back. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith recently called on the Government to preserve the traditional family as 'the most vital part of society'. He made a clear distinction between marriage and cohabiting, claiming the 'relationships are not the same - and there are consequences for us all'.*

When did these ideal families exist apart from in a pack of Happy Families cards? Certainly not within living memory of many MPs, including David Cameron. According to the Office of National Statistics, in 1961 only 38% of families consisted of a married couple with two or more children.** That was before the swinging Sixties kicked in, before the Pill was widely available, before the Women's Movement gained momentum and before homosexuality was made legal. These are all things blamed for destroying the ideal family.

Just in passing - how many Tory MPs have had affairs or got divorced? The unscientific answer is - too many for them to be preaching at the rest of us. This is 'don't do as we do, do as we say' politics. Or maybe I just think that because I'm not married.

* Speech at the Janet Young Memorial Lecture 4 November 2011

** ONS Social Trends 40 (2010 edition) p 14.

Have A Nice Day

2011-11-29T15:06:00.006Z

People often complain about being 'ordered' to have a nice day by shop assistants or coffee shop workers or pretty much anyone American.

I'm no grammar nazi but here's the thing. 'Have a nice day' is not an imperative, an order. It's a subjunctive, expressing a hope or wish (it also has other uses).

Other examples of this use of the subjunctive are:

Get well soon
Long Live the King
Live long and prosper
Goodbye (god be with ye)
Farewell
Hallowed be thy name
(Have a) Happy Birthday
(Have a) Happy Christmas
The old English 'Wassail', a contraction of 'Waes Hail' means 'be healthy', a kind of early version of 'have a nice day'. If/when the NHS falls apart we might want to revive it.

It's harder to spot a subjunctive in English because there is no special verb form to indicate it as there is in other languages. In French, for example, 'hallowed be thy name' is 'que ton nom soit sanctifié' and the soit gives it away.

This may not make it any less annoying the next time someone says 'have a nice day' and you know they don't give a toss but at least now you can be annoyed for the right reasons.

Save Our Souls - on the NHS

2011-11-03T20:25:00.010Z

Should the National Health Service be tending to our spiritual health and if so, how far should it go?

This week, during a debate about an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill, tabled by psychiatrist and crossbench peer Baroness Hollins, the Archbishop of York called for the words ‘spiritual health’ to be inserted into a clause about the duty of the secretary of state, the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups to improve the quality of services.

Spirituality is already covered in healthcare guidelines even though there is no evidence-base for it and even though its use is so broad as to be almost meaningless as I wrote about here. For example, going to football matches is considered a spiritual act by some healthcare providers, including the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Guidelines often assume that everyone is spiritual and has spiritual needs that the NHS must cater to. NHS Scotland’s past guidelines stated: ‘We are not human beings seeking spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings seeking what it means to be human’.

The NHS already forks out £29 million a year for hospital chaplains and again there is no evidence that they improve the patient care. In fact, many of the country’s best hospitals spent the lowest proportion of their expenditure on chaplaincy services.

The debate around the amendment wasn't just about some sort of wooly feel-good spirituality. The Archbishop of York’s idea of treating the spirit goes beyond what most people would consider the domain of doctors and nurses. During the debate, Dr John Sentamu told peers: "I am one of those who believe that human beings are psychosomatic spiritual entities."

He then explained how he freed the spirit of a girl who was terrified after seeing a goat sacrificed. Visits from a GP, psychiatrist and psychologist did little to help, he said, but then he said a prayer, anointed the girl and lit a candle on his visit. Shortly after, he received a phone call saying the girl was no longer terrified and was talking again. "That was not mental or physical illness; there was something in her spirit that needed to be set free," he told his peers.

This is a very particular interpretation of the word ‘spiritual’. A spokesman for the Archbishop said the case of the young girl just involved a standard prayer of healing. With candles and anointing to set her spirit free? Although Sentamu did not directly describe his actions as exorcism, they were very close to standard exorcist practice. He is not, by the way, a medical doctor. He is, however, someone who determines the laws and policy of this country along with all the other bishops in the Lords. Even so, as a lawyer he should know that one anecdote does not constitute evidence.

However, his statement isn't that outrageous when you know that the NHS has already been quietly working with exorcists to treat patients for at least 40 years.

Dr Rob Waller, a consultant psychiatrist and an honorary clinical lecturer at the University of Edinburgh was formerly part of a medical support group for the local Catholic exorcist at Bradford District Care Trust. It met monthly to discuss cases and whether they should be dealt with by the church or by a doctor. He said: “There was a similar set-up with local imams, and the Church of Scotland has links with psychiatrists and considers exorcism.” He also said that every consultant psychiatrist will see a “handful of patients” in their career requiring “some kind of deliverance ministry”.

It sounds so much more innocuous when you call it deliverance - although maybe not if you've seen the film of that name.

Professor Robin M. Murray, head of Psychiatric Research at Kings College’s Institute of Psychiatry, who this year was awarded a knighthood for his services to medicine, said: “Not all psychiatric problems respond to conventional treatments. So while I don’t know of any scientific evidence that exorcism works, I would have thought it reasonable for a [hospital] chaplain to carry this out.”

This is a scientist saying that a procedure with no evidence is reasonable.

However, Dr James Woolley, consultant psychiatrist at the Springfield Hospital in southwest London, doesn't believe in demonic possession or exorcism. There are many psychiatric syndromes characterised by a patient believing they are possessed and, for that reason alone, Woolley says, it would be “reckless and unprofessional” to recommend exorcism as an avenue of treatment. “The psychosis could get worse, and being in a highly paranoid state is associated with the risk of harm primarily to yourself and potentially to other people.”

Reckless and unprofessional. There is a possible placebo effect but the ethics of placebos are complex and still need evidence to justify their use.

In the mid-1970s, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Donald Coggan laid down strict guidelines on exorcisms (deliverance) which were to be carried out only by an appointed diocesan exorcist after consultation with a doctor. The Church of England has 44 exorcists, one for every diocese, appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Next time Rowan Williams is sounding off in the media, bear in mind that he is in charge of these men. The interview for appointment must be interesting.

There's a story in the Mail today about a nurse who asked Jesus to help when a baby was dying of a heart attack. While this is an extreme case, and she was struck off (and it is the Mail) the dangers of introducing any level of non-evidence-based behaviour into healthcare should not be treated lightly. The current trend for 'holistic' treatment opens the door to worse care, not better. At a time when the NHS is facing severe cuts, surely the most important thing is to treat patients and keep them alive long enough to worry about the state of their souls?

White Poppies or Red on Remembrance Sunday?

2011-11-01T16:14:00.006Z

In 1933 the Co-operative Women's Guild produced white poppies to be worn on Armistice Day - which became Remembrance Sunday. The Guild made it clear that the white poppy was not intended as an insult to the people who died in the Great War - a war in which many of the Guild women lost men - but a challenge to the continuing drive to war. In 1934 the secular Peace Pledge Union (PPU) was founded; it joined them in the distribution of the poppies and later took over the project.

Conscientious objectors were often treated very badly during times of war even though the Military Service Act of 1916 made it legal to object to fighting. Some went to war in non-combatant roles (for example, as stretcher bearers at the front, facing great danger - and they did not receive military pay) while others refused to have anything to do with the war effort. Objectors had to go before a tribunal, which was notoriously harsh and there was no shortage of people (often women) handing out white feathers to 'cowards'. Many objectors were religious - mostly Quakers - but not all.

Many of the "conchies" in the First World War were imprisoned in Richmond Castle, North Yorkshire. They were paraded through the town as a form of humiliation or threatened with execution. Life was also hard for their families, dealing with the 'shame' and the objectors often found it hard to get work afterwards. Given the harsh treatment of the men who would not fight, they were hardly cowards.

Ian Hislop made an excellent programme about them in 2008.

In World War II, there were nearly 60,000 objectors under the National Services (Armed Forces) Act of 1939. Treatment was less harsh but they were still stigmatised. In some countries today, objectors are still harshly treated. Forces Watch has issued recommendations on how the British Forces should deal with objectors within its ranks. It states that 'The procedure for registering a conscientious objection is not safeguarding the rights of those in the armed forces and, through lack of awareness, some could end up facing court martial and a criminal conviction'.

White poppies are still not without controversy. For example, the Royal Canadian Legion is staunchly opposed to them. In 2007, the BBC's Head of Editorial Policy said that TV presenters wearing anything other than the red poppy would 'undermine the trust of the audience'. The white poppy project is also accused of diverting funds from the British Legion who have been raising money for ex-service people since 1921. Some people see the pacifist ideals of the PPU as naive or misguided.

So what colour poppy will I be wearing? I am broadly a pacifist but not entirely; there are some justifiable wars. I don't think that we should have stayed out of World War II, for example. There are also morally justifiable interventions in other countries' wars. On the other hand, recent governments have been too quick to get involved in overseas wars for less than honourable reasons. And I support the right of anyone to be a conscientious objector.

Consequently, I have bought a white poppy and will also be wearing a red one. It might appear over-liberal to be a pacifist (or in my case, a semi-pacifist) but it's a genuinely-held and considered moral position. I'm aware that, as a woman, I would never have been conscripted and had to act on my beliefs.

It's important to recognise the bravery and sacrifice both of people who fought to defend us and the ones who went to war in non-combatant roles or who followed their conscience and didn't go at all. I will explain this to people who ask why I'm wearing one or who are hostile.

White poppies can be bought online from the PPU or from some outlets like the Quaker House on Euston Road in London.

Doctor Jesus - Refreshing the parts that other doctors cannot reach

2011-10-21T11:03:00.006+01:00

I wrote a while ago that Doctor Richard Scott is being investigated by the GMC for preaching and trying to convert patients. Now Dr Mark Huckstep, an Oxfordshire GP, has been disciplined for bringing God into the surgery too after NHS Oxfordshire received complaints. He has been investigated by NHS watchdog the National Clinical Assessment Service (NCAS) and the General Medical Council (GMC).

Dr Huckstep admitted he used his Christian beliefs as a "complementary therapy" for patients and refused to refer women for abortions because the killing of an unborn child by doctors is a “morally wrong act which also damages women emotionally and psychologically”.

Doctors are permitted by GMC guidelines to pass patients wanting an abortion on to other colleagues if the procedure is against their beliefs, but not to pass judgment on the patient or the procedure. Christian anti-abortionists often use the line that abortion harms the woman, as I've written about several times - most recently here. Just to be clear - there is no evidence of serious harm to women who have abortions, despite the lies (yes, lies) about cancer and mental illness.

Is faith a 'complementary therapy' and, if so, should a doctor be using it in a clinical setting?

Huckstep claims that “This was discussed at length with the PCT approximately seven years ago. We came to the agreement that my Christianity could be treated as a form of “complementary therapy” in addition to usual treatment – ie I would first treat patients according to best practice guidelines, hand them the prescription if there was one, and then ask their consent to talk with them about their lives from a broader point of view than what would be possible if one believed that science could explain our human condition adequately.

“If the patient consented, then I was free to discuss more metaphysical issues such as the meaning of their lives, their struggles with feelings of guilt, shame and meaninglessness, their fear of death, etc, and to suggest books that may help in confronting these issues. Such discussions were always in addition to normal treatment, if time allowed. They were not instead of normal modes of treatment.”

Huckstep's defence was that, because he is certain God exists, “It would be impossible to relate to patients pretending that science could answer their deepest needs when I am fully aware it cannot”.

This defence is very similar to the one used by Dr Richard Scott. He's claiming that he refreshes the parts that other doctors cannot reach. Which is fine if you're a beer, not so good if you're supposed to be keeping people alive long enough to worry about shame and meaninglessness.

He says he did it 'if the patient consented'. It's already been demonstrated by the Scott case that patients are often vulnerable when they come to see a GP and may not feel able to say no. What's more, GMC guidelines state that any discussion of faith should be introduced by the patient, not the doctor as this can easily be an abuse of their position of power. This should be an opt-in, not an opt-out.

The story was featured in the Oxford Times. One of the comments on it is 'He certainly never asked my permission before embarking upon his religious spill (sic), and he certainly kept me waiting over half an hour before being seen and during my consultation he disappeared off a couple of times to do other things'.

So why did the PCT agree to let him do this? They didn't.

A spokesman for the PCT said “The PCT has discussed with Dr Huckstep in the past about his religious beliefs but the PCT has always made it very clear that his religious convictions were not to be imposed on any patient who did not share his views. The PCT did not use the term complementary therapy nor feel that this term in any way reflects its views.”

Huckstep sounds like a bit of a disaster as a doctor anyway. He was also suspended for his 'catastrophic' approach to admin which could have put patients lives at risk -as featured on a recent C4 Dispatches. So it sounds like his real doctoring wasn't even treating the parts of patients' lives it should have been.

Following the investigation, NHS Oxfordshire said Huckstep could return to work under strict conditions, which include a retraining programme.

He has not returned to work as a doctor. His work as a speaker spreading the Good Word about Jesus probably keeps him busy. The sick people of Oxfordshire will have to find something else to treat the human condition. Antibiotics, maybe.

A Tank Engine is For Life, Not Just For Christmas

2011-10-13T21:05:00.002+01:00

Just as Christmas arrives in the shops earlier every year, stories about how secularists and atheists are killing Christmas arrive in the papers earlier. This year, Sainsbury's had mince pies with a sell-by date of early October. Also in October comes the story that all references to Christmas have been taken out of a new episode of Thomas the Tank Engine.

In an episode called Keeping up with James, the trains compete to carry presents to children. There's a decorated tree and a choir. But instead of using the word Christmas, there are “winter holidays” and a “holiday tree.”

This early in the year the goose can still get into its jeans but the Christian soldiers have already locked and loaded. The Mail and the Telegraph are, not surprisingly, making a big deal of this.

Hilary Fortnum, daughter of Thomas author Reverend Awdry, told them she feared political correctness was eroding Christmas and that - predictably - the programme had "taken Christ out of Christmas". Just for good measure, she added that “Local councils won’t advertise Christmas carols and nativity plays in case they are sued for not being inclusive”. It's not clear what her evidence is for this claim but we can soon expect stories about schools not putting on nativity plays any more and how the lack of children putting tea towels on their heads is damaging the British tea towel industry as well as the soul of the nation.

Ann rent-a-quote Widdecombe predictably commented that “It is another example of the politically correct brigade trying to airbrush Christmas out of our lives”. Most of us would be pretty happy if Christmas was airbrushed out of our lives until at least late November.

Hit Entertainment who make the series said references to Christmas were removed because the episode is on a DVD designed to be sold all year round. They added “It was not a seasonal release specifically aimed at a Christmas audience, but we do put out seasonal releases that have Christmas in the title. Last year we had Christmas Express and next year we are planning another Christmas title.’ So it's nothing to do with being politically correct, it's to do with making money.

UK Christians complaining about discrimination and persecution should perhaps look at the growing persecution of Christians in Pakistan. In one far from isolated incident a twelve-year-old girl from a Christian family was kidnapped, raped and beaten for eight months in an attempt to make her convert to Islam. Other incidents include attacks on churches and the homes of Christians, discrimination in housing, education and employment and false allegations of blasphemy, which can potentially result in a death sentence. Or there is Youcef Nadarkhani, the Iranian pastor arrested and sentenced to death because of his faith.

But no, British Christians with their unelected bishops in the House of Lords, exemptions from equality laws and one third of state-funded schools will continue to bang on about being discriminated against and sidelined, particularly when they want the right to be homophobic. They will whine about Winterval and the birth of Little Baby Jesus not being what it used to be. And all this even before Halloween.

In the Year of Our Lord

2011-10-07T16:27:00.011+01:00

The latest threat to everything we hold dear is the BBC ordering its staff to stop using BC and AD and use CE and BCE instead.

The BBC has been accused of ‘political correctness’ and not surprisingly, the Daily Mail is lamenting the end of civilization (again). Is the BBC really turning its back on 2000 years of Christianity? Tell that to the producers of Thought for the Day or Songs of Praise.

The Mail also reports that the Government has stepped in to protect BC/AD. They just will not let this story go, running another version of it with Andrew Marr getting all worked up, saying he would still use BC/AD - unlike the sinful Jeremy Paxman and Melvyn Bragg who use BCE/CE. Even WH Smith uses BCE/CE alongside BC/AD. What is the world coming to? Just as well Ann Widdecombe was on hand to talk to the Mail to bring us to our senses.

Then the Vatican jumped on the bandwagon, accusing the BBC of ‘historically senseless hypocrisy’ – which of course the Mail reported, with a lovely picture of Jesus to remind some of us of our sins. How many times can you write the same article in slightly different words? Many, many times.

Except that it isn’t true. The BBC said in a statement: ‘The BBC has not issued editorial guidance on the date systems. Both AD and BC, and CE and BCE are widely accepted date systems and the decision on which term to use lies with individual production and editorial teams.’ The advice about which terms to use referred only to the religion section of the BBC website. BBC’s head of religion and ethics, Aaqil Ahmed said ‘For our religion and ethics programming on BBC television and radio we generally use AD and BC”. He added "It is a shame that people seeking to make mischief should cast a shadow over the wonderful celebration of our Christian religious heritage that is Songs of Praise" - a resounding rejection of Christianity if ever I heard one.

The Mail even quotes the BBC at the end of their articles - in the interests of fairness and balance, of course - but then continues to flog the dead horse into a bloody pulp over the following days.

Incidentally, these so-called new terms (CE and BCE) became standard in schools nearly a decade ago. They stand for the Common Era and Before the Common Era. I've long wondered why AD is in Latin (anno domini) while BC is in English (before Christ). Couldn't someone have translated BC, just for consistency? AC for ante Christus, perhaps? Maybe they decided that sounded too much like anti-Christ. (My Latin is way rusty is the -us ending right?)

The story then took another twist. The ever-opportunistic Lord Carey, former archbishop of Canterbury, told the Mail that people of other religions do not object to BC/AD but that ‘In reality, we know it is the increasingly ill-tempered secularists, groups such as the National Secular Society, throwing tantrums at the mention of Christianity, not the Chief Rabbi or Britain’s imams’. I work for the NSS and can state categorically that the only time anyone has a tantrum is when the biscuit tin is empty. And that's me.

But even the gatekeepers of All Things Decent slip up sometimes. This article in the Mail's science section (yes, they have one) had the dreaded 'new' dating system in it for a while until the Thought Police spotted it and changed the date to 1045AD. Phew, close one.

The Mail has been reported to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) for continuing to run a misleading story. However, as Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre is chair of the PCC, the complaint may not get very far.

40 Days of Treats

2011-09-30T15:11:00.007+01:00

The anti-abortion group 40 Days For Life are back outside the offices of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas) in London.

They are saying Hail Marys, displaying models of foetuses and handing out leaflets. This time there is a counter-campaign. Instead of setting up a rival protest or taking on the demonstrators, which could make things even more difficult for women who go to bpas, Carmen d'Cruz and Liz Lutgendorf decided to ignore them completely and focus on the bpas staff. They've organised 40 Days Of Treats for the staff who have to deal with the protesters being outside every day. The plan is for every day the protesters are there, they will take the staff a little treat to show support for them and for the right to choose.

I went in to the bpas offices in Bedford Square, London WC1 today and took them strawberries. I figured that if everyone else is taking them cakes and snacks it might be a good idea to take a healthy treat - we don't want to kill them with kindness.

The leaflet being handed out by the protesters says 'You can stop injustice' on the cover, along with words like homelessness, racism, sexual trafficking and poverty. What's inside has nothing to do with any of this. It's the usual collection of highly emotive language and images plus misinformation of the kind Nadine Dorries is no stranger to.

It talks about the 'preborn' - in the same way that eggs, flour, fat and sugar are precake, perhaps. There is also the usual list of Terrible Things that will happen if you have an abortion, both physical and psychological, along with gory descriptions of abortions. Along the way there is also a quick shot at stem cell research.

The leaflet has an article associating abortion with eugenics and denies that the world is over-populated. This focuses on falling birth-rates in Europe and says that 'far from rapaciously expending resources, developed societies have consistently figured out ways to make fewer resources stretch further'. The fact that this is partly by exploiting the third world where overpopulation, famine and disease are still rife isn't mentioned. The warning about falling European birth rates reads like an alarmist call to repopulate Europe by banning abortion.

They are also against abortion after rape and incest which, they say, makes everything worse for everyone concerned. There's a promo for pre-marital abstinence and lifelong monogamy too.

The logic of many of their arguments defies analysis. They quote 'scientific evidence' that has been repeatedly debunked and give only the skimpiest of sources.

As just one example, the source for 'women who abort are 144% more likely to physically abuse their children' is given only as Acta Pediatrica 2005. This is a monthly journal so that's hardly being transparent. They claim that there are full citations on their London website but if they are there then they're so well hidden even their search facility can't find them.

You can read the research paper here. It's a study of mostly black, low-income women in Baltimore. Its conclusions are 'However, counter to expectations, maternal history of induced abortion was not linked with enhanced risk for neglect after the effects of a number of variables associated with neglect were controlled' and 'the data were gathered in only one geographical locale and the study adopted a retrospective methodology that relied primarily on self-report assessments, which could compromise the integrity of the data gathered as well as the generalizability of the findings. A final limitation pertains to how the abuse and neglect cases were selected'.

This is pretty typical of the way anti-abortion groups misuse research and statistics, as I've written about several times before.

Anyway, on to happier and more cake-based matters.

If you want to join Carmen (left) and Liz (right), the campaign runs until November 6. You can follow 40 Days of Treats on Twitter @40daysoftreats and read the blog for updates. The plan is to spread the campaign to bpas offices in other parts of the UK so you don't have to be in London to join in.

John Gray on science and religion

2011-09-19T14:04:00.008+01:00

John Gray's talk on Radio 4's Point of View called Can religion tell us more than science? (transcript here) claims that 'too many atheists miss the point of religion, it's about how we live and not what we believe'.

Gray maintains that 'We tend to assume that religion is a question of what we believe or don't believe'.

Firstly, who is this 'we'? Secondly, don't be patronising by pretending to include yourself and then showing very clearly why you're not one of we.

He blames this assumption on western philosophy (yes, all of it, apparently) and 'the dull debate on atheism'. Again with the patronising. He continues: 'In this view belonging to a religion involves accepting a set of beliefs, which are held before the mind and assessed in terms of the evidence that exists for and against them. Religion is then not fundamentally different from science, both seem like attempt to frame true beliefs about the world'.

Religion is not just that, it's also about morality, among other things. It tells us how to live. Science, on the other hand, makes no attempt to tell us how we should live. Nor is it based on a supernatural world view but on observable evidence. The activity of science is about how to interpret that evidence. Religion decides what the truth is, science attempts to uncover it. So yes, fundamentally different.

Gray likes his generalisations. He lays the blame for the false view of religion partly of the feet of Frazer and his book The Golden Bough, which he says has been 'immensely influential'. He claims it lies behind the assertions of the 'new atheists'.

Many atheists and others know that there are many reasons to belong to a religion, some cultural or social, some historical and some emotional. The majority of people do not objectively analyse their religion or weigh up the relative evidential merits of all of them before plumping for one. Some aspects of religion, like creation, are examined by some believers in an attempt to find evidence and even then, they are trying to justify their beliefs to others, not to themselves. Only a small number of theologians and thinkers actively examine their beliefs as a whole. It's not common practice to weigh up the evidence for the Sermon on the Mount or accepting Jesus as your personal saviour in order to win eternal salvation.

And religions do rest on what we believe - take the Credo, for example, which is Latin for 'I believe' and is followed by a list of things the believer believes in. They don't like it very much if you think it's just words when you're preparing for First Communion. Belief, or dogma, matter very much to the Fathers of the Church. Heresy is about believing the wrong things, so are schism and apostasy. They're not just about doing the wrong thing but believing the wrong thing and then acting on it.

He continues:'the idea that religion is a relic of primitive thinking strikes me as itself incredibly primitive.'

Again, this is not the only or the dominant thought about religion among atheists who he is far too keen to tar with the same brush. The human mind has not evolved a great deal since primitive times. It is not now a sophisticated machine compared with the neolithic brain. One common idea is that religion is a by-product of the way our brains evolved (see Pascal Boyer, for example) - and the way they still function, which is why we still have religion. There are elements of religion that come from early societies which are not relevant today but which still form part of the core beliefs but many of these are to do with identity and difference as much as trying to explain the universe in an animistic or divinely controlled way.

Then he gets to the nub of his argument: 'Practice - ritual, meditation, a way of life - is what counts. What practitioners believe is secondary, if it matters at all.'

This is a little simplistic to say the least. Actions are informed by beliefs. And beliefs do matter to the people who hold them. There are rituals that are performed without conscious analysis of the beliefs that underpin them but that doesn't mean the beliefs themselves are unimportant. One way they matter is in defining the difference between one set of believers and another. Rituals can be comforting, they can bind groups together and they can structure our time but without the beliefs they rest on, they would not have the hold on the mind that they do. And there would be nothing to distinguish them from any other ritual behaviour. He's positing a kind of religion as OCD.

When he says that it's actions that count - what does he mean by 'count'?

Gray then turns to science. 'Scientific inquiry is the best method we have for finding out how the world works, and we know a lot more today than we did in the past. That doesn't mean we have to believe the latest scientific consensus. If we know anything, it's that our current theories will turn out to be riddled with errors. Yet we go on using them until we can come up with something better'.

This is where there is a bit of slippage between his uses of 'belief'. Scientists don't believe a theory, they know that it is either true or that it's the best current approximation of the truth. Non-scientists don't believe theories either, they accept that some expert or other knows what they're doing. Not all our current theories will one day fall apart.

He says: 'If science produces theories that we can use without believing them, religion is a repository of myth.' This is a bit of an odd if...then scenario. Science doesn't produce theories we can use without believing them because no-one believes a theory, they either know it to be true or the current best guess, as I said. So his initial statement is false. Moreover, religion is not a repository of myth to the people who believe it, it's revealed truth except for the half-hearted who just go along for a bit of a sing. And while it contains stories or parables, it also contains instructions on how to behave that rest on the basic tenets. If you don't believe those tenets to begin with, then your actions are empty.

He then says: 'Just as you don't have to believe that a scientific theory is true in order to use it, you don't have to believe a story for it to give meaning to your life.' He's being a bit slippery with his use of 'true' here. Knowing that a scientific theory may be a workable approximation is not the same as knowing that a myth didn't actually happen while containing useful guidance to behaviour or insight into the human mind.

Apparently, 'some of the ancient myths we inherit from religion are far more truthful than the stories the modern world tells about itself'. Well yes, some myths are better than others but this nostalgia, this 'myths aren't what they used to be' approach overlooks the fact that there are also non-religious myths that contain lessons about ourselves. Privileging religious myths without any kind of quality control is fruitless.

Darwin's theory of evolution , he says is 'unlikely to be the final truth'. Who says it is? There have already been plenty of refinements, additions and corrections to it.

He then attacks the 'myth of salvation through science. Many of the people who scoff at religion are sublimely confident that, by using science, humanity can march onwards to a better world'.

There is no such generally held myth. Rational people think that some parts of science can be a useful tool for improving our lives. This is partly based on evidence - medicine and technology have demonstrably improved lives. That the improvements have yet to benefit most of the Third World is not a failure of science but of politics and, in some cases, religion (for example, banning condoms for HIV/AIDS prevention, contraception and so on). Moreover, many scientists are more than aware of the destructive potential of science - nuclear war and global warming for example. They are not singing hymns to the power of science. Gray says that 'it can't save the human species from itself.' as if this were some great insight.

He claims that science is a human invention, just like religion. Yes, they are both the products of the human brain but religion is entirely made up whereas science methodology is based on phenomena. It's a bit like comparing cheese and a pyramid - not a comparison that tells us anything very useful about either.

Evangelical atheists, he says ' think human life would be vastly improved if only everyone believed as they do, when a little history shows that trying to get everyone to believe the same thing is a recipe for unending conflict.' Historically, when attempts have been made to try and get everyone to believe the same thing, these things have generally not been evidence-based but ideological. Getting everyone to believe that we'd better look after the planet rather than letting it fall apart is not such a bad idea.

Gray concludes that we should 'stop believing in belief' because 'What we believe doesn't in the end matter very much. What matters is how we live'. So if you feel like joining a religion, 'just go into the church, synagogue, mosque or temple and take it from there'. Should you just do what you're told without examining why? Follow the rituals and never mind the theology? Just taking it from there may not do you much good in some religions or denominations if you happen to be female or gay.

Gray is seriously misrepresenting science and all but a handful of the most extreme atheists - who in fact are not very scientific in their approach, lacking an understanding of human nature. But he is also misrepresenting religion, selling it short as deeds not words - and without any kind of assessment of what price you or others may have to pay for that kind of cavalier, mindless approach. Never mind, let's all just sing a hymn together, it'll be a marvellously uplifting, bonding experience. Better still, sing it in Latin so we don't have to worry about what the words mean. He's right that it's how we live that matters, but he's wrong about everything else.

Dorries - Weebles Wobble But They Don't Fall Down

2011-09-08T14:04:00.006+01:00

MPs have rejected Nadine Dorries’ bid to change the law on abortion counselling for women by 368 votes to 118.

During the debate, Dorries continued to use discredited ‘facts’, unsubstantiated anecdotes and emotional statements, brushing off challenges from MPs who are also doctors and might be presumed to know what they're talking about.

She portrayed herself as a valiant David struggling alone against the well-funded Goliath of the left-wing media and Abortion Rights. At one point, she even claimed ‘I’m broke’. She allowed interventions from as many supporters as she could, some of them vehemently anti-abortion, despite claiming that she isn't and that the debate wasn't about abortion in principle. She also still persistently denied that any knowledge of how Right To Know are funded.

At one point, Dorries bemoaned the fact that she had lost Cameron's initial support for her amendments. She blamed Dr Evan Harris, saying that he is blackmailing the Prime Minister and the Government. At this point, there was uproar in the House. It will be interesting to see if she dares to repeat this potential libel outside the safety of parliamentary privilege. Stewart Jackson MP described Julian Huppert MP as 'Dr Evan Harris' vicar on earth'. Evan will now grow a moustache to twirl in a fiendish way, with any luck.

She didn't stand unchallenged, however. There were MPs who spoke strongly against her and Diane Abbott said 'this is a shoddy, ill-conceived attempt to present non-facts... the opposite of evidence-based policy making'. So it's not just men who oppose you, Nadine.

Julian Huppert pointed out that the current system works well and that what is needed to reduce abortion numbers is better access to contraception and better SRE (sex education) for both boys and girls. It's not known if Evan was hiding under the seat with his hand up Huppert's back at that point although it might be worth asking Huppert so say 'bottle of beer' as a test.

Health Minister Ann Milton ended the 90 minute debate, commenting ‘the amendments won't work for women’. However, she also said that the Government supports the ‘spirit of amendments’; there will be a consultation and another vote in Parliament – so there is yet more work for campaigners to do.

Dorries has claimed that she ‘won the war’ and will continue the fight both for this and for a reduction of the upper time limit on abortions. Like the Terminator, she will be back. Unlike the Terminator, she won't come back reprogrammed as a good guy. She is relentless and, as she has apparently no political ambition, there is little her party can do to restrain her. Expect her tactics to get even more anecdotal, emotive and evidence-free.

She is also still blaming the LibDems, saying on her blog (with no sense of irony) that ‘politics yesterday was certainly at its dirtiest and most complex’.

The amendments were originally tabled by Dorries and Frank Field MP. He pointed out during the debate that his name had somehow been left off them and added that he would not now be supporting her. Field also said 'We should be more concerned with facts, and less concerned with trying to put our sticky fingers into other people’s souls and pronouncing that they have failed'.

He asked Dorries to drop the amendments but she refused so the House divided.

Members voting in support included Cabinet Ministers Iain Duncan Smith, Liam Fox and Owen Paterson while George Osborne, Nick Clegg, both Milibands, William Hague, Ed Balls and Ken Clarke voted against the amendment. David Cameron was not present. You can read the full division list to see how your MP voted here.

One effect of the anti-abortion lobby is that the other side fall over themselves to say they are not pro-abortion but pro-choice. No one wants to be heard saying abortion is a good thing. But why not? It's not an easy thing, it's not anyone's ambition to have one but, if you need one, it's the only choice. For me, it's a good thing that abortion exists, that it's legal, affordable, safe and relatively freely available. So in that sense, I am pro-abortion in the same way that I am pro assisted dying.

Nadine Dorries - Fact and Fiction

2011-08-30T18:09:00.011+01:00

Nadine Dorries MP wants women to see 'independent' counsellors before they have an abortion, not go to abortion providers like Marie Stopes International or the British Pregnancy Advisory Service because they have (she says) a vested financial interest which she compares with pension mis-selling. She is proposing an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill on September 6th to ensure this happens, along with Frank Field MP.

She is also on record saying that her political blog is '70% fiction and 30% fact... I rely heavily on poetic licence'.

Let's take a look at her being poetry in motion.

Research by Education For Choice has found that 'independent' is a word that belongs in Dorries' 70% category. And her comments about the 'financial interests' of BPAS and others are based on about as much evidence. [ETA] On Newsnight last night, Dr Evan Harris pointed out that the Department of Health’s own website warns against independent advisers.

Dorries is being backed by the Right To Know campaign. Despite describing this as 'our campaign', she now says 'I have no idea how they're funded'. She's also being poetic about their motivations, saying 'They may be ideologically driven'.

She has said that abortions are currently done before women have time to think what they're doing. Does she really mean this? Has she thought through the implications of saying that women are incapable of making their own rational decisions? Be careful you don't get distracted by thinking about shoes or you might accidentally have an abortion.

Then she claimed that Dr Evan Harris 'lost it' on an interview with Sky TV - an interview which she refused to share with him, insisting on being recorded separately. In it, Evan pointed out yet more flaws in her argument. It's not obvious what he he lost. His bus pass, possibly.

Dorries is being advised by the Christian Medical Fellowship, whose own interesting relationship with the truth I've already covered, for example here. So not only are her words 70% fiction, she is also consorting with fictionalists (I've made that word up because I'm bored of calling them LIARS).

The Right To Know campaign are bandying about the 'fact' that 30% of women who have abortions go on to suffer mental health problems. This claim is based on a paper from the British Journal of Psychiatry. The paper's conclusion is, quite reasonably, that abortion is not without consequences for some women.

However, the paper also states ‘The evidence is consistent with the view that abortion may be associated with a small increase in risk of mental disorders’. That's may be. It also states that ‘the overall effects of abortion on mental health proved to be small’ and could be the result of ‘uncontrolled residual confounding’. This means there could have been other factors influencing the results that they failed to rule out. That's being honest because it's an academic paper not a work of fiction.

Most tellingly, the conclusion says: ‘Specifically, the results do not support strong pro-life positions that abortion has large and devastating effects on the mental health of women’.

So that's another bunch of fictionalists she's consorting with.

She claims that the number of abortions would be reduced by 60,000 a year if women had independent counselling. Presumably she arrived at this figure by thinking of a number and then adding a load of noughts as there is no evidence to back it up. Her story-telling stops at this point rather than considering what might happen to these 60,000 babies in terms of supporting both them and their parents. For her, the happy ending is a full-term pregnancy. In this respect, she's close to the Catholic Church's position.

Dorries wants us to go back to being a Christian nation with Christian values. But the ruling classes' relationship with these values has always been a marriage of convenience, using them to justify or condemn whatever and whenever it suited them. Moreover, 'Christian Britain' is a nostalgic idyll for a time and place that existed alongside the land of the Care Bears and belongs in the 70% of words put together in a sentence that look like they might be true but in fact aren't. Besides, back in the days of Yore when we were at least nominally a Christian nation, the only people who really benefited were upper middle class white men - much like the ones who still dominate the House of Lords and the Tory party.

The latest from Dorries is this gem 'I wonder why someone would provide a quote to a national newspaper when they obviously have no idea what they are talking about?' I'm not even going to go there.

She has also said 'I have chosen the 'fact' I wish to believe'. That would be the fact that is 70% fiction, presumably.

It's almost too easy to take her arguments apart. When her bill amendment was first raised, many people said it was nothing to worry about, it would disappear and pro-choice campaigners were getting worked up about nothing. But now it looks like the Government could turn her fictions into fact, which means that no one will live happily ever after.

There's a good analysis of the almost total lack of evidence for changing the current abortion counselling position on the Nothing Special blog.

Next time will be less of a tirade, honest.

UPDATE 1 September 2011: The Government has done a U turn on abortion counselling but the free vote could still go either way next week. This means that MPs can vote according to their conscience rather than the party line.

UPDATE 2 September 2011: It's gone up from 30% to 'twice as likely' to suffer mental health problems post-abortion. She's done a loaves and fishes job on the stats.

Pro-choice groups are supporting an amendment by the Libdem MP Julian Huppert:

All organisations offering information or advice in relation to unplanned pregnancy choices must follow current evidence-based guidance produced by a professional medical organisation specified by the secretary of state.

Doctor Jesus - Curing Cancer With Ribena

2011-08-25T18:07:00.015+01:00

Ofcom has ruled against the evangelical channel Believe TV for promoting Ribena and an olive-oil soap as a cure for cancer and other diseases, including heart disease, ovarian cysts and a bit of an achey back. The soap can also 'grow new kidneys'.

There's no need for a scientific analysis of why these things can't cure cancer or anything else. There's no need for randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, peer reviewed testing. Whether it's olive oil, Ribena or any other substance, these are just props. They have no inherent curative properties, which is why they are not cures for specific problems. Paul Lewis of Believe TV has also claimed that a bath with Miracle Olive Oil Soap can help if you're behind with your mortgage. What really cures is faith - it's the active ingredient. God can work through anything if you believe. If they don't work, it's because of a lack of faith.

It's the products' USP and a marketing ploy that must be the envy of all advertisers - if a product doesn't work, there's no money-back guarantee because it's the consumer who's faulty, not the product.

What's more, if a tumour or a bad back does disappear, it can't be proven that it wasn't cured by faith even if the patient was receiving conventional treatment at the same time.

This is where miracle cures are different from other forms of alternative medicine, which always have some sort of pseudo-science theory behind them.

Many adverts involve an element of faith, which could be described as the triumph of hope over reason. We believe that products will make us more successful, more attractive or thinner, that they will make us live longer. We have faith that the companies will do what the adverts say they will. If they don't work, we often have legal recourse or we can switch to another brand.

Paul Lewis and others like him are not selling a lifestyle, they're selling life. The stakes are much higher than promising shinier hair. And there is no other brand, he has a monopoly.

There is a kind of transformative magic at work like the one that changes the communion wine and wafer into the real body of Christ. Any bit of bread or bottle of wine will do. It's the same process that shamen and witch doctors have used for millennia, an infusion of magic.

As cultural norms evolve, so does who we trust and believe. Miracle workers are culture-specific; the shaman evolves into the tele-evangelist. Their props are also culture-specific; Ribena wouldn't work in a culture where it wasn't a known brand, for example. The transferable commodity between cultures and down through history is faith, the human propensity to believe the unbelievable.

Paul Lewis knows that people who buy Miracle Olive Oil Soap wouldn't rub a toad on themselves because that's not the current cultural practice. He and others like him know that they can operate only within certain cultural parameters using culturally familiar artefacts and familiar practices like taking a bath. Olive oil is a benign substance (with Biblical connotations) and while Ribena may seem an odd choice, it's comfortingly familiar with overtones of childhood nostalgia. It's just good marketing sense.

With culturally-embedded practices and a clause to prevent claims for refunds, it's a win-win situation. It's also why, no matter how many times Ofcom or the Advertising Standards Authority ban the promotion of a cure, there will always be another one.

The Doctor Jesus series is here, here, here, here and here.

Bell, Book and Candle

2011-08-07T11:19:00.008+01:00

Exorcism is not just unscientific - the concept of evil makes us all Bart Simpson.

BBC's Sunday Morning Live today had a discussion about exorcism and a woman claiming that it cured her alcoholism. Leaving aside the scientific aspect - regular readers will know what I'd say on that - there is another aspect to consider.

Belief that bad things are caused by an outside agency is the supernatural equivalent of the Bart Simpson defence - a bigger boy made me do it.

The word 'evil' is problematic. It's used by non-believers to describe certain sorts of human behaviour and by believers to describe the agency of the devil. Both use it to identify something that is allegedly inhuman, alien or Other. And that's the problem. Whether it's alcoholism, homosexuality, mental illness, unruly children, child abuse or serial killing, 'evil' sources the cause as something outside human nature.

Even though many non-believers use it as a catch-all with a whole range of nuances, there is still too often a sense that this is not regular human behaviour. But it is, everything humans do is human nature, we can't just pick the bits we like or easily understand. Neither is it evidence of our 'animal nature', something to be tamed or that we must rise above, it's part of human complexity.

A secular authority uses the judicial system to deal with this 'evil', some religions use exorcism.

Exorcism - or deliverance as some churches call it - is founded on a victim mentality that is perversely comforting. We are not responsible. We are at the mercy of supernatural attacks and only God can protect or liberate us. In addition, sometimes it's the most religious who are the most assailed so it becomes almost a badge of piety to be possessed. The woman on Sunday Morning Live who blamed possession for her alcoholism was handing over responsibility. She saw alcoholism and other afflictions not as a disease or as a choice but as something that was inflicted on her, something which she had no power herself to overcome.

Like many of us, she wanted to blame someone or something for what happened to her. No one can help being born with a propensity for alcoholism or psychopathic behaviour but 'blaming' our genes or environment isn't satisfying. As humans, we look for something with human-like intentions because that is both easier to conceptualise and to distance from ourselves.

One response to her was that whatever gets you clean is good. But this way of thinking leaves people like her open to further possessions. Anytime something bad happens, responsibility is handed over to the devil. If God doesn't deliver you the first time, keep going until he does. Not only does this attitude make us victims, it infantilizes us, holding us in a suspended state of child-like irresponsibility, pushing away both blame and understanding.

A watered-down and more secular version of this Devil-think is the idea of luck, which looks to ascribe outside causes to agencies that can be propitiated or neutralised through ritual. It may appear less harmful than a belief in possession, but it's part of a continuum, a position that acknowledges science but then over-rides it. It's like instances where people know there is a scientific reason for something happening - livestock dying or being burgled, for example - but then go on to ask why here, why now, why me? And the answer is something Outside.

Calling behaviour evil can be a way of saying 'it couldn't happen here, we're not like that'. But as we saw in Norway recently, it can and does happen in all of our 'heres'. Putting photos of killers with red-eye in the paper and calling them the face of evil really doesn't help prevent that. We're all capable of behaviour that we're not proud of and the only way to prevent it, either as an individual or a society, is to recognise it, not to think of it a some sort of alien invader.

We're not Mediaeval peasants who can execute a pig for killing a child or blame a curse for making our crops fail but our minds haven't changed in just a few hundred years. Belief in exorcism or even (bad) luck is still a kind of contamination theory: something infects us or attacks us or breeds inside us - something that can be contagious and that has a cure of the same order. Whether we think it's the devil or some sort of allegedly secular evil, this is sci-fi/horror movie thinking.

Max von Sydow is not going to turn up to fix us and neither is Sigourney Weaver. The Alien is us.

Lying for Jesus (Yet Again)

2011-08-03T13:33:00.004+01:00

The pro-choice charity Education for Choice has first-hand evidence that pregnancy crisis centres based on a 'Christian ethos' are using scare-mongering, emotional blackmail and lies to try and put women off having abortions. The Guardian coverage of the story tactfully talks about 'inaccurate information' but let's call it like it is. Lying.

EfC sent women undercover to centres including some run by the organisation Life. One of the undercover EfC women was given a leaflet that claimed 85% of abortions are carried out using vacuum aspiration. It stated that 'the unborn child is sucked down the tube' and that 'the woman should wear some protection. She has to dispose of the corpse.'

Another centre tried to persuade the woman to put off the decision and another handed out its 10-step 'road to abortion recovery', including steps entitled 'guilt and shame' and 'forgiveness'. The EfC women were shown baby clothes and talked to in emotive terms to manipulate them. There were also the usual lies about mental illness and cancer caused by abortion.

I'm confident in calling these lies because I've looked at some of the research the claims about cancer and mental illness are based on.

The Government is considering farming out services to 'independent' organisations, which would include those with religious motivations. In this instance, it appears that 'independent' mean 'independent of scientific fact and the NHS's own guidance on abortion'.

MP Nadine Dorries wants women to be forced to go for counselling before they can have an abortion - and this counselling cannot be provided by any organisation that also carries out abortions, for example Marie Stopes International.

Her original intention was to make this change an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill but it is now possible that the change will be made without a parliamentary vote. It appears that her ally Frank Field MP could be working with the Department of Health to introduce these new counselling arrangements via regulatory change instead.

If practices at the organisations investigated are anything to go by, this would be very bad news indeed for women and their partners. Only two out of the ten centres EfC visited gave accurate advice and only one mentioned centres which provided abortions. These are not good odds for someone who chooses to go for counselling and even worse odds for anyone being forced to have it.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a consultation on advertising pregnancy advice centres. The proposal is that they must state whether or not they will refer for abortion. Perhaps they should also be required to display their beliefs on large signs outside the building. Then women would really be able to make an informed choice about whether to go in or not. Some would and that's up to them.

This Government is constantly banging on about transparency so any proposal to use organisations that base their activities on lies, subterfuge and ulterior motives masked as offering 'choice' does not bode well for the Big Society.

Memento Mori - Dealing With Death

2011-07-24T10:52:00.017+01:00

Some evolved survival mechanisms are the skeleton in the cupboard.

The death of celebrities or large numbers of regular people provokes an outpouring of shock, public grief and an intimate examination of their lives which, with the benefit of hindsight, led inevitably to their deaths.

The reaction that we are pleased to have is that the death of Amy Winehouse and the deaths in Norway provoke empathy both for the dead and for their families.

At the same time as feeling empathy, we have another reaction that it's not always quite as comfortable to admit to. Publicly-reported deaths always serve as a memento mori, a reminder of the fragility of life. The death of young people provokes particularly complex reactions; both Winehouse and most of the Norwegian dead were young.

News of any death creates cognitive dissonance, the discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. So empathy for the dead and grieving creates and becomes entangled with fear of our own death. It's uncomfortable to feel sorry and afraid at the same time; we want the empathy but not the fear. Humans are (as far as we know) the only animals to be aware that we will die and we have to deal with that when we're reminded of it.

Memento mori means roughly 'remember you will die'. It's also used as a term for artefacts. These date back to antiquity but became widespread in Mediaeval times. They were a means of reminding people that death - and Judgement - were never far away to keep them close to the Church. Images of skulls, skeletons and the Grim Reaper are widespread in religious art for this purpose. The Book of Common Prayer still has the line 'In the midst of life we are in death. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust'. Carpe diem and all that.

As well as being aware we will die, we also have the ability to push this thought away. At the same time as empathizing, we also remind ourselves that Winehouse was an addict whose life was a mess and that we don't live in Norway.

We start to collect reasons why such deaths could never happen to us - this is the survival mechanism. This reaction can tip over into blaming the victim - Winehouse brought it on herself, for example. Some of the coverage majors on the 'fact' that she'd been on an 'ecstasy and booze binge'. Her many appearances while drunk or drugged are poked into, along with comments on her appearance - 'Amy also appeared unhealthily thin, with scabs on her face and marks on her arms, wearing scruffy clothes' in the Sun, for example. Her 'friends' are quoted as saying they were afraid for her before her death, that it was inevitable.

The shock of Norway is that it was Norway - a low-profile country where nothing much ever happens from an outside perspective. But it was Norway and we don't live there, we dodged the bullet through the good luck of geography. Calling the massacre of over 80 people (at the time of writing) a national tragedy helps bind their nation together but it also serves for the rest of us as a comfort that it wasn't our nation.

There is sometimes a certain Schadenfreude in our response too, a pleasure in the suffering of others. It's a comfort for us not being rich and famous to see how screwed up the lives of celebs are. But on this occasion the Norwegian deaths complicate the freude because the dead were not rich and famous, they were nobodies like us - and that brings it closer to home. This weekend, the Schadenfreude is less pleasure and more relief. We're not rich and famous but at least we're not Norwegian. It's not a laudable response but it's a human one just as much as the emotions and reactions we're more proud to own.

However, our success in telling ourselves that it couldn't happen here can come back to bite us when it does, especially when the perpetrators are home-grown. Freud might have called it the return of the repressed. The Norwegians had successfully insulated themselves; according to the BBC, 'Norway has had problems with neo-Nazi groups in the past but the assumption was that such groups had been largely eliminated and did not pose a significant threat'. We're all human, we're all fragile but this time it wasn't us and couldn't have been us - until it is.

The desire to read these stories or watch the news coverage may seem callous, something we shouldn't do, something tabloid and nasty for the better-educated to tut about - but it is part of the survival mechanism, the distancing process, insulating ourselves from death. Even the more rational media play into this, for example by listing other musicians who died young of overdoses or suicide - Hendrix, Cobain, Joplin etc, mentioning the 27 Club - some 38 musicians who died age 27.

The media aren't really doing anything that we don't all do, even if on an unconscious level. We may not like all of our instincts, and some we should probably not give in to, but covering them up or identifying them as something other people do, people we look down on, is not realistic. Doing that is also another human response though. Human beings are complicated buggers.

Always Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide? Part 3

2011-07-22T11:28:00.009+01:00

Should students be accepted for medical school if they have no intention of treating certain people or conditions?

A survey shows that a significant number of medical students think doctors should be able to refuse any procedure that contradicts their beliefs. The procedure that causes the most contention is, as always, abortion.

Not all of the respondents were religious; non-religious students thought opt-outs should be a right too - 35% thought there was a place for conscientious objection. The survey also found a prevelance among the religious to object to certain procedures and patients.

In general, support for a doctor's right to refuse any procedure that troubles their beliefs was highest among Muslim medical students at 76.2% while 54.5% of Jewish students thought the same, as did 51.2% of Protestants and 46.3% of Catholics.

More than double the number of Muslim students than non-believers would refuse an abortion when contraception failed. A higher percentage of Muslim students than others would object to prescribing contraception. Nearly eight percent of them also stated they would object to ‘intimately examining a person of the opposite sex’. The survey didn't ask how students would feel about examining LGBT people which, along with not exploring the reasons for objections in the non-religious, is a limitation.

Doctors opting out of treating certain patients is only part of the problem. Some students are refusing even to learn certain areas of medicine in the first place.

It was reported in the Sunday Times four years ago that some Muslim medical students were refusing to attend lectures or answer exam questions on alcohol-related or sexually transmitted diseases because they claimed it offended their religious beliefs. This was corroborated by both the BMA and the GMC. Professor Peter Rubin, chairman of the GMC’s education committee, said: “prejudicing treatment on the grounds of patients’ gender or their responsibility for their condition would run counter to the most basic principles of ethical medical practice”.

GMC guidelines recognise the right of freedom of expression for medical students but state that this 'cannot compromise the fundamental purpose of the medical course: to train doctors who have the core knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviour that are necessary at graduation'.

The GMC also specifically states that a foundation level doctor cannot practise while refusing to examine patients on grounds of gender or those patients whose illness can be attributed to their lifestyle. Guidance drawn up by the GMC advises doctors to refer a patient to a colleague if they object to a certain procedure or treatment. They must also give patients enough information so they can seek treatment elsewhere within the NHS. In some situations, doctors' consciences can (and should) be accommodated but the foundation level doctor is often the first one to see acute patients and any delay in treatment could have serious implications.

The research paper on the survey concluded that ‘Once qualified as doctors, if all these respondents acted on their conscience and refused to perform certain procedures, it may become impossible for conscientious objectors to be accommodated in medicine’. It also states that ‘The views of large numbers of Muslim students are contrary to GMC guidelines, and thus the medical profession needs to think about how it will deal with the conflict’.

Although Muslim students are clearly a growing problem, Muslims are not the only ones to object to certain procedures. The Christian Medical Fellowship, which has 4000 members, is also strongly anti-abortion, for example. Almost a third of the students surveyed wouldn’t perform an abortion for a congenitally malformed foetus after 24 weeks, a quarter wouldn’t for failed contraception before 24 weeks and a fifth wouldn’t even perform an abortion on a minor who had been raped.

Some of the reporting of this survey has gone straight to worse-case scenario and ignored the finding that a lower percentage of students would refuse to carry out a procedure than actually objected to it. However, the percentages are still significant and the situation needs to be addressed while respondents are still students. If the number of medical students prepared to carry out a termination when they qualify is shrinking, then women will find it hard to access abortion safely and quickly in the future.The UK may be drifting towards the situation in Italy where nearly 70% of gynaecologists refuse to perform abortions and 50% of anaesthetists refuse to assist on moral grounds even though abortion is legal.

While the GMC is holding out against students' right to pick and choose what they learn, the question remains - why do people want to become doctors if they are only going to treat certain patients or conditions, and where do they think they will practice this limited form of medicine? It's not just women's needs that are taking second place to beliefs; the provision of universal healthcare is being challenged too. Perhaps medical students need to be triaged when they apply to colleges and clearer limits set on the conscience to make sure that patients' needs always come first.

I wrote a response to the GMC consultation on conscience opt-outs for the National Secular Society some time ago.

In Part 1 I looked at the affect on women of pharmacists being able to opt out of selling emergency contraception if it's against their beliefs. I also wrote a consultation response for the NSS on this subject. It's not just in the UK where conscience is becoming a problem. In Part 2 I looked at the debate in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on doctors' opt-outs.

Update 3 August 2011
In related news, a Christian midwife is refusing to wear trousers because Deuteronomy 22:5 says that it's wrong to wear the clothes of the opposite sex. Trousers are part of the uniform for hygiene purposes and the hospital is so far sticking to its guns saying that wearing them is 'proportionate'. Let's hope she never wears clothes of mixed fibres and doesn't have pierced ears.

Barking Up The Wrong Tree

2011-07-01T13:08:00.007+01:00

I was taught at school always to read the question before answering an exam. Basic, really.

In 2009, the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) ran a consultation on changing the rules for advertising Post Conception Advice Services (PCAS). I wrote a response for the National Secular Society, sent it off and waited to see what happened.

The new rules would allow more PCAS to advertise and would also ensure that adverts were not misleading about the services they offered - principally whether they would refer a woman for abortion or not (some can't if they're run by nurses and some won't if they're Pro-Life). There were certain restrictions about when adverts could be run - not close to children's programmes, for example.

BCAP were well aware that adverts might cause offence to some people who have a moral or religious objection to abortion but considered there were strong public health grounds to justify showing them and that the 'specific consumer interest in question is that of pregnant women'. It took into account the fact that 'these are legally available services offering a range of advice and that providers should be permitted an appropriate level of freedom of expression to advertise'. it also stated that 'offence taken by some members of the audience is not in itself sufficient reason to prohibit a particular category of advertising'.

I wondered why there had been no results of the consultation published.

This week, we got an email from BCAP saying they were running the consultation again.

The new consultation notes explain that the 2009 consultation resulted in 27,000 responses from people stating they were offended by the proposals, mostly on religious or moral grounds. However, 'most respondents appeared to have misunderstood what was being proposed' and 'few respondents commented on the specific question of whether it is appropriate to allow a broader range of PCAS (including commercial services) to advertise and whether it is sensible to require services that do not refer for termination to say so'.

27,000 is an awful lot of 'offended' people. So offended that they didn't bother to read the questions properly. Or maybe they did and just wanted to have a rant anyway.

Some of these responses were:

* BCAP's proposal will encourage promiscuity among young people and divorce sex from mature relationships.

* BCAP's proposal will promote abortion as a means of birth control.

* BCAP's proposals are in conflict with the Audio Visual Media Services principle that audiovisual commercial communications shall not cause moral detriment to minors.

* Abortion providers mislead women into thinking that abortion is a quick-fix solution to a problem pregnancy with no harmful consequences.

The consultation notes also say - 'you need only write a second time should you feel that your understanding of the proposal has changed'.

This is a polite way of saying - rant as much as you like, we'll still ignore you. Maybe it will make a difference, maybe they will get another 27,000 misguided rants. The NSS response does not need to be submitted again.

If you believe abortion is wrong for moral or religious reasons, that's your prerogative, as is saying so publicly. Replying to a consultation that exists only in your head is neither persuasive nor productive. All you achieve by barking up the wrong tree is frightening the squirrels. Don't be surprised if they throw nuts at you.

If you want to respond to this public consultation, it's here.

I'll be attending the Pro-Choice rally next Saturday.

Blessed are the cake bakers

2011-06-12T17:59:00.004+01:00

The Solace tent at the Isle of Wight festival offers free cake. It's run by volunteers from churches who also offer to wash feet and say prayers.

“It’s a feast of hope and a model for other churches to follow,” said Roy Crowne, head of the nationwide initiative HOPE, which encourages churches to work together on projects like this one. “We’ll be following the Solace team and their adventures, because we want to learn from their example.”

Er, no.

It's FREE CAKE. I would let pretty much anyone wash my feet and pray over me for a slice of good homemade cake. Especially at a festival if I'd been chemically interfered with. Even if I was in such a state I couldn't remember my own name, my cake radar would still be fully functional.

The only example this is setting is that people like cake. It's not a feast of hope, it's a feast of cake.

According to the Solace Facebook page, they were praying for good weather this weekend. They should have spent more time praying and less time baking. I hope the cake didn't get wet.

There will also be a Solace stall at Bestival.

Chastity is joyous - the Vatican AIDS Conference

2011-06-01T17:04:00.006+01:00

At a two-day international conference on HIV/AIDS in Rome last weekend the Vatican reiterated its stance on condom use – never, in any circumstances.

The Catholic Church’s strategy is a combination of caring for infected people and so-called education of consciences, claiming to put human dignity at the centre of its AIDS policies. It is one of the largest providers of HIV/AIDS care in the world but its unmoving doctrine on condom use is often accused of causing millions of needless deaths and the related suffering they entail. They won't help you avoid getting infected but they will look after you when you are. Which is nice.

The conference was organised by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers. One of its aims was to address the confusion over the Pope’s statement last year that condom use might be justified in some circumstances to prevent disease transmission. It was made more than clear that’s not what he meant. Absolutely not. Ever. As if they hadn't already covered that one.

Just before the conference, Vatican moral theologian Father Perez-Soba provided a trailer when he published an article saying that condoms make the AIDS epidemic worse because they encourage immoral behaviour. According to him, using a condom shows a lack of respect for the other person.

His advice for married partners where one of them is infected is simple – stop having sex. Ever again. He also wrote that ‘a sexual act carried out with a condom cannot be considered a fully conjugal act.’

Monsignor Suaudeau of the Pontifical Academy for Life backed him up by saying ‘Chastity is joyous’. The Academy's remit is: 'to pay honor to pure science, wherever it is found, and to assure its freedom and to promote its research, which constitute the indispensable basis for progress in science'. Scientists of the world, look away.

The position of the joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) is that the correct and consistent use of condoms is an integral and essential part of HIV prevention, along with education, limiting sexual partners and marital fidelity.

Not everyone has those options. Much effort has gone into educating sex workers – both male and female - around the world into using condoms. Elizabeth Pisano's excellent book The Wisdom of Whores looks at initiatives with sex workers. It also shows just how unrealistic Vatican diktats about sex are in pretty much every way.

It’s hard to see how human dignity can be respected by preaching celibacy (something the Catholic Church itself has proven to be rather weak on) while ignoring human nature and the realities of life. The Vatican’s unchanging position is both unrealistic and inhumane. But to expect anything else from them is also unrealistic. The only real question is why they bothered having the conference.

Doctor Jesus - Government Approved

2011-05-27T11:30:00.007+01:00

Two linked stories about religion and health this time.

Dr Richard Scott has been disciplined by the General Medical Council (GMC) for bringing Jesus into the surgery after the mother of a patient complained that Scott preached at her son during a consultation. Scott believes that where Western medicine ends, Jesus can step in. He claims he has seen Jesus curing people and that 'there is a place for Jesus in the surgery'. He also believes that homeopathy works - there is about the same amount of evidence for both of these practices. None.

He describes the 'faith approach' as 'an optional extra' but it's one patients have to actively opt out of.

The Bethesda Medical Centre in Margate where he practices is run by six Christian GPs. The website states: The 6 Partners are all practising Christians from a variety of Churches and their faith guides the way in which they view their work and responsibilities to the patients and employees. The Partners feel that the offer of talking to you on spiritual matters is of great benefit. If you do not wish this, that is your right and will not affect your medical care. Please tell the doctor (or drop a note to the Practice Manager) if you do not wish to speak on matters of faith.

NHS patients should not have to opt out of being preached at. Many people go to the doctor in a vulnerable state and may not feel confident enough to challenge him or her as the balance of power is very much with the doctor in that situation. There is a very big difference between practising medicine and practising Christianity.

Not only did he prescribe a dose of Jesus, he tried to convert the patient whose mother complained, telling him that 'he might find Christianity offers more than his current faith', suggesting the patient went to Scott's church or its Alpha courses. Presumably he's done a randomised, placebo-controlled, peer-reviewed experiment to prove this. He is supposed to be a scientist, after all.

The GMC is very clear that doctors 'must not impose their beliefs on patients, or cause distress by the inappropriate or insensitive expression of religious, political or other beliefs or views.' If the patient wants to lead a conversation about faith then that's a different matter but even then, the doctor should keep his or her views in the background. Even the UK College of Healthcare Chaplaincy, an entirely religious body, describes proselytising as 'spiritual abuse' in its 2005 guidelines.

Scott is not deterred. He believes that the GMC's ruling is further evidence of 'Christians being hammered at work' and is appealing the decision, backed by the Christian Legal Centre who are always quick to jump on any case where they think that Christianity should take precedence over all other rights. You can see a clip of him talking here.

Scott also spoke about referring women to a local Christian abortion counselling centre. It's not surprising that he and an increasing number of others think it is their right to force their beliefs onto people in the workplace and in therapeutic settings. There is an increasingly foetid climate of religion demanding exemption from laws and guidelines. The Government is fuelling this state of affairs by welcoming hard-core believers into health care services with open arms - despite the fact that over 70% of people in the UK (Including reasonable, rational believers) support abortion and contraception.

The new sexual health forum set up to replace the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV will include the Life organisation - but not the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. Life is also a member of the new Sex and Relationships Council recently launched in parliament and endorsed by education secretary Michael Gove - all nine members of this group are either pro-abstinence, anti-abortion or both, including the Silver Ring Thing.

Life said that all members of the forum want to reduce the number of abortions and their motives are secondary. This is disingenuous at best. Life's mission, according to its website 'is to uphold the utmost respect for human life from fertilisation (conception) until natural death' and that it fulfills this mission by 'Offering non-directive counselling and information on pregnancy, pregnancy loss and abortion.' It's hard to see how it can be both pro-life and non-directive.

One of its aims is 'challenging governments and policy makers to adopt policies which reflect and uphold the utmost respect for human life from fertilisation until natural death'. They are opposed to abortion even after rape. The apparent reason for having them on the forum is to bring 'balance' but presumably this means balancing scientific evidence with a position that is neither scientific nor evidence-based.

As if this weren't enough, MP Nadine Dorries thinks that teaching abstinence - but just to girls - will solve everything, including child abuse. And in Richmond, the Catholic Children's Society has been given a contract to advise schoolchildren on contraception and pregnancy.

The abortion rate for under 18s has fallen so this is no time to revisit the Dark Ages of ignorance, judgement and prudery. Virginity is not a precious gift from God. Some of us are getting very weary indeed of saying that abstinence has been proven over and over not to work. These hard-core religious groups claim to be pro-life but it's not the life of women and young people they care about.

More of the Doctor Jesus series here, here, here and here.

Sex and Secularism

2011-05-20T15:08:00.008+01:00

A new report called Sex and Secularism is, inevitably, being promoted as 'Atheists have better sex!' but, also inevitably, it's a bit more complicated than that.

The report, by Darrel Ray and Amanda Brown, is based on a survey of 9500 completed questionnaires by people over 18 who had 'lost' their religion and become secular/atheists. Most of the respondents were American but the survey covered 94 countries. Nearly one in five respondents were ex-Catholics but 20 religions and denominations were represented.

The report counters the possible objection that respondents were not really properly religious in the first place and details the struggles many had before losing their religion. Getting accurate, honest information about sex is harder than running a survey on which supermarket people use and there are ethical issues around this kind of research too. The findings are based on self-reporting by a self-selected group but significantly, they are consistent with data from a wide range of other research.

One quibble though is that the authors confuse/conflate atheism with secularism.

The central finding of the research was that religious people do pretty much everything the non-religious do but they feel much guiltier about it. People who grew up in the most religious homes reported feeling guilt nearly 80% of the time compared with 26% of non-religious. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. But they kept doing what they were doing anyway. Biology trumps doctrine every time.

Many religions see human nature as something bestial to be tamed, risen above or battered into submission. Sex is a necessary evil to keep the human race going but it would really be an awful lot better if we could do without it. It's not just Catholics who have a hard time squaring nature and faith according to the survey: Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostalists and Baptists have it worse while Unitarians and some Jews have a better time. One interesting little note is that people leaving New Age religions also report better sex after so tree hugging and tantric crystals aren't necessarily the path to good sex.

Despite many religions preaching the evils of masturbation, the message doesn't seem to be getting through. The Bible has the cautionary tale of Onan, damned because he shed his seed upon the ground. It doesn't have anything to say about women masturbating, perhaps because we're not wasting any eggs or perhaps because the writers of the Bible were all male and couldn't conceive of a woman having pleasure without a man. Assuming we're allowed to enjoy our bodies in the first place. Which we're not.

The survey found that 87% of the non-religious were masturbating by age 15 and 93% by age 18 (I'm rounding the percentages). Of the most religious, the figures are 83% and 90% - very little difference even though a fifth of them had been 'shamed or ridiculed' by their parents about it.

48% of the least religious had started petting by 15 and 84% by 18. For the most religious, it was 44% and 81%. (Petting is kissing, rubbing and touching - you may be old enough to remember when swimming pools had signs saying 'No running, no bombing, no petting').

Then the survey asked about oral sex - for some people a substitute for the 'real thing' to avoid pregnancy although still a potential source of STIs. For the non-religious in the same age brackets, it was 20% and 63%, for the religious 19% and 55%. What the survey doesn't say is whether boys are giving as well as receiving.

The religious start using porn a little later but their use was almost the same as the non-religious by age 25. The report found that the most religious US states and those with the most restrictive sexual legislation have the highest porn use.

The religious also fantasise nearly three times more than the non-religious and are nearly eight times more likely to feel they are doing something wrong. It's probably no surprise to many people that all these things are going on but the rates of incidence are more than might be expected. Which must make for some interesting sessions in the confession box and an awful lot of penance.

Finally, 18% and 62% of the non-religious had intercourse and 16% and 53% of the most religious. By age 21, it's 88% non-religious, 84% religious. So although they may be starting a little later, the religious are soon making up for lost time. The report also states that 95% of Americans have sex before marriage and it seems unlikely that the remaining 5% are all Baptist ministers. This of course raises the issue of hypocrisy, making very many allegedly upright religious people nothing but whited sepulchres.

One concern raised by this data is that the more secular got far better sex education than the religious. Instead of getting fact-based information, young religious people are getting far more knowledge from personal experience, porn and the internet. Sex education isn't all it could be but religion doesn't make it any easier for young people to get the facts or to explore and enjoy their sexuality safely.

The findings also reinforce existing data that abstinence teaching doesn't work; it delays first intercourse by a few months at best and increases the incidence of unprotected sex.

As a side bar: The Guttmacher Institute's survey of American women found that contraceptive use by Catholics and Evangelicals, is the widespread norm, not the exception, and only 3% of married Catholic women use natural family planning (the rhythm method) to avoid pregnancy.

So instead of teaching/forcing people to avoid any sexual activity, all that the strictest forms of religion do is breed ignorance, guilt and hypocrisy. You'd think they'd call in some marketing experts; any other corporate body that found its product was failing to reach its target market would rebrand and repackage, and find a new USP. The trouble is that sex has a much deeper market penetration than any religious message.

Back to the survey: the good news is that, after leaving their religion, guilty feelings about all things sexual decline very quickly and 60% of the formerly most religious felt every aspect of their sex lives had improved while 28% changed their sexuality. The assumption that a highly religious anti-sex upbringing will scar you for life doesn't appear to be true.

All of this is probably no consolation if you're a non-believer (or a secularist) with a lousy or non-existent sex life but at least the possibility of having much better sex is some consolation for burning in hell for all eternity.

Good Girls Don't

2011-05-06T10:59:00.004+01:00

Nadine Dorries MP has introduced a Bill proposing that girls between 13 and 16 get extra sex education. Specifically, that they are taught to practice abstinence. Chris Bryant MP adeptly took her argument apart but she won the vote by 67 to 61.

She started the debate by blaming the 60s, which is a sure guide that someone doesn't know what they're talking about. She then said that her Bill is about 'empowering girls'.

How does she propose to do this? Firstly, by misusing statistics as evidence that sex education isn't working. She says quite rightly that Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. She doesn't say that this has begun to fall. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics show teenage pregnancies are at their lowest rate since the early 1980s with the rate among under 18 year olds falling by 13.3% since 1999.

Then she switches to the tabloid-style tactic of seven year olds being taught to put condoms on bananas. Most seven years olds I know would eat the banana before the teacher had even got the condoms out. If that was actually happening, of course.

As the Sex Education Forum say: 'For children aged 3-6 years teaching is centred around issues like, ‘where do babies come from’ ‘why are girls’ and boys’ bodies different’ and ‘which parts of my body are private’. Learning about friendships, families, and changing bodies are also central to primary SRE'.

Dorries, like her friends in the tabloid press, conveniently ignores the 'and relationships' part of Sex and Relationships Education (SRE)

Instead, her Bright Idea is to teach teenage girls about the joys of abstinence - despite the fact that all the evidence shows abstinence teaching doesn't work and in some cases makes things worse as it leaves teenagers unprepared when they do inevitably have sex - as I've written about before.

Dorries has close ties with the group Christian Concern for Our Nation and her politics are highly influenced by her hard-line Christian beliefs. I looked at the latest round of religious propaganda about SRE here. Not surprisingly, organisations like the Christian Legal Centre and Christian Concern support her Bill.

Her Bright Idea applies only to young women. Not only are they the 'victims' of a sexualised society, they must now be the gatekeepers of teenage boys' sexual appetites. Just because this Bill was introduced by a woman doesn't mean that it isn't sexist.

Of course plenty of Christians are not misogynistic but the hardliners' idea of empowering women is to make sure that they walk up the aisle a pure virgin and even then only have sex to make more good little Christians.

It's not only sexist, the implication is that boys are little animals who can't control themselves and shouldn't even be expected to try. This is not a million miles away from the thinking that makes women cover their entire bodies so that men aren't distracted by lust.The more resourceful boys will just come up with a list of things to do with girls that 'don't count'.

It also denies young women the opportunity to explore and enjoy their sexuality fully equipped with the information they need to make safe choices. Because nice girls shouldn't even be thinking about sex. Sex is demonized as a dark and dangerous thing, trying to scare young women away from it. Dorries ignores the fact that some girls might be lesbians or bi. How will abstinence teaching work when they can't be scared off with the Big Bogey Man of pregnancy?

Today's news that 59% of parents don't want young children taught about sex isn't surprising given the amount of misinformation in the media and people like Dorries. When parents were asked at what age it was appropriate to teach sex education to children in schools, by far the largest number of parents (48%) said 13 or older.

The Sex Education Forum points out that 'there is strong evidence that young people who have sex education that starts early and covers a broad range of topics are less likely to have sex at a young age, have fewer partners and are more likely to use contraception or condoms'. Holland, France and Germany have much lower rates of teenage pregnancy. They also start sex education earlier than we do. Education is not the only factor in reducing pregnancy rates but this fact does seriously undermine Dorries' argument.

It's true that sex education in the UK is patchy. The law currently requires only that young people are taught the biological basics, schools are allowed to teach according to their (religious) 'ethos' and parents can opt their children out. There's a long way to go but hopefully when Dorries' Bill gets its next reading, more MPs will bother to turn out to vote it down. It is, as Chris Bryant said, 'the daftest piece of legislation that I have seen'. You can see which 67 MPs thought this Bill would be a good idea here.

Easter - The Remix

2011-04-23T19:49:00.010+01:00

Hallelujah! He is risen! But who has?

Gods who die and come back again are standard issue in the ancient world. The symbolize the way the earth 'dies' in the winter and is 'reborn' in the spring, or the way 'dead' seeds go into the earth to be regenerated as next year's crops. There was also an element of sacrificial magic with the sacred king's blood fertilizing the earth, prefiguring the Christian's obsession with sacrificial blood. For early agrarian societies, this cycle was the focus of their lives.

The Christian myth is a cut and paste of far more ancient myths, or a 're-imagining' as Hollywood likes to say.

To look at just a couple, Herakles/Hercules died and rose again, then ascended to Heaven to be with his father. There was darkness when he died (an eclipse) and his followers used the phrase 'he is risen', which reappears in the Bible at Mark 16:6 without so much as a credit. Herakles died at the spring equinox too. I looked at the very many similarities between Herakles and Jesus here.

Osiris was another jack-in-the-box god who died and regenerated. He was also known as The Resurrection and the Life and The Good Shepherd. His followers took communion, eating his flesh in the form of wheat cakes.

Even a woman got in on the act: Persephone went into the underworld and returned each spring.

Nothing unique about the resurrection, then. Other Easter symbols are stolen too (or perhaps they're an 'homage').

The cross was a pre-Christian symbol representing the Tree of Life or the World Tree. It also appears in ancient Egyptian symbolism, among others. The Celtic cross combines the cross and a circle, an ancient yoni (female) symbol.

In Norse mythology, Odin hung on Yggdrassil, the World Tree, as a sacrifice. Hanging 'between heaven and earth' was all part of the day job for a god in the ancient world. Scarecrows are a relic of this hanging man. From divine symbol to bird-scarer and horror-movie staple is a bit of a come-down.

Early Christians had no cross and some even considered it a relic of pagan times. Its adoption came in handy for the Mediaeval Church who, never slow to miss a business opportunity, made a fortune selling splinters from it. It must have been a damn big cross given the number of splinters (and nails) it produced.

The Easter festival was named for the Saxon fertility goddess Eostre, a form of Astarte who dates back to Neolithic times in the Middle East. Her sacred month was Eastre-monath (the moon of Eostre). Incidentally, her name became the root of the word oestrogen. This is now disputed by some but the jury is still out.

The Easter bunny was originally the moon-hare, sacred to the goddess in both eastern and western traditions. Hares were long associated with pagan beliefs, witchcraft and shape-shifting so the hare was softened into the much fluffier bunny.

Zoroastrians celebrated their solar new year at the spring equinox and gave each other coloured eggs, usually red. Christian co-opted the redness as the blood of Christ. In some traditions, the hare laid the eggs.

In recent times, the job of dying and being resurrected has been taken over by Doctor Who. Even though Easter is the foundation stone of the Christian Church and England is still allegedly a Christian country, when David Tennant died and was resurrected as Matt Smith in 2010, eight million people watched. According to the latest figures from the Church of England, fewer than 1.5 million went to church at Easter.

But without Easter there would be no carb-based joy. Hot cross buns, Easter eggs and my personal favourite, Easter biscuits - although they've become hard to find. In 1210, under the interdict of Pope Innocent III, King John's candidate for Archbishop of Canterbury, John De Gray, decreed that during Lent hot cross buns were classified as fish, and could therefore be eaten during fasting and abstinence. And we get two Bank Holidays which the more secular French do not. So, if nothing else, thank you gentle Jesus for giving us (another) reason for feeling superior to the French.

Sex Education For Scouts

2011-04-05T15:52:00.003+01:00

The Scouting Movement is going to teach its members about sexual health to try and combat the high rates of teenage pregnancy and STIs in the UK. The guidelines for leaders set out what's appropriate for them to teach and when they should get professionals in, as well as providing resources to help them.

The Scouts still insist that new members make a Promise to do their duty to God/Allah/My dharma and so on with no non-religious alternative. But the guidelines lay down that any teaching about sex and sexuality must be strictly factual and secular, whatever the beliefs of the Scout leaders.

The guidelines state that ‘As adults in Scouting, it is important that, regardless of our own faith and values, we offer appropriate guidance to young people. All young people are entitled to information and advice to allow them to make informed choices’ and ‘Whilst some Scout Groups are sponsored by religious bodies this should not be a barrier to providing appropriate advice, information and guidance to young people in line with Scout Association Policies’.

The Scouting Movement is sensitive to the beliefs of young people (and their parents) but its website pragmatically comments ‘Throughout history religion has provided society with a great deal of information about sexuality. Many of these societies subsequently used this information to create laws regulating sex. However, it is important that these laws are seen in their historical context’.

In other words, times change and the Scout Movement is taking responsibility for seeing that its members are not kept in the Dark Ages. It recognises the role of faith but it values and promotes the role of facts. It’s promising to see that their motto ‘Be Prepared’ now applies to preparing young people for this aspect of adult life along with the more traditional scouting activities. It's not indicated if they will get badge for it, though.

The factsheets can be downloaded here.

Vatican Causes Cancer? Part 2: The Verdict

2011-03-17T22:48:00.003Z

The Vatican has been ordered by Italy's Supreme Court to pay compensation to the town of Cesano near Rome after a long court battle over whether or not Vatican Radio's 60 masts have caused cancer in local children.

The court has found the evidence 'coherent and significant' that children in the area are six times more likely to develop leukemia.

I covered this story last year and all is not what it appears to be.

To sum up what I wrote before:

1. The Italian Navy also has masts in the area

2. The data submitted to the court is highly flawed.

3. There is no good evidence that masts cause cancer or of how cells are damaged by radio waves (see my original article for links to Quackwatch).

4. Italy has one of the highest rates of childhood cancer (leukemia and lymphoma) in the world.

5. There is insufficient data on the Cesano region to compare with Italy as a whole to tell if the rates really are higher.

The consumer association backing the residents' claim has said that 'Finally justice is done'. Vatican Radio has said that it is 'disappointed' by the ruling.

Parents with sick children can't be blamed for looking for someone or something to blame, some way of making sense of what has happened to them to restore a sense of order in the world. Compensation may make them feel they have more control over the situation and are not so much victims. But blaming the wrong cause means that the real cause goes unexplored.

While there may be a certain irony in the Vatican being called to account for something it didn't do while (so far) getting away with something it did do (sanction the abuse of thousands of children), irony's gain is science's loss.

Fear and Loathing in Sex Education: 2

2011-03-13T14:33:00.004Z

The Christian Institute is trying to whip up publicity and alarm parents again with more lies about sex education in their latest report, Too Much, Too Young.

Their widely quoted press release says that 'Explicit sex education materials are being pushed by public bodies for use in schools with children as young as five. One of the controversial resources encourages children aged five and over to learn about anal intercourse, oral sex and prostitution'.

However, their report is not about what is happening but about what may happen if sex education (SRE) is made compulsory and if some of the currently recommended materials are used more widely.

Enter the world of fear-mongering fantasy.

The report includes extracts from some of these resources. Some of the worst offenders are the BBC and the award-winning book by Babette Cole, Mummy Laid An Egg. It also names local authorities currently recommending them.

Particular culprits campaigning for mandatory sex education are the Sex Education Forum, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the Labour Party (even though Ed Balls seriously watered down the Children, Schools and Families Bill, as I wrote about at the time.)

Far from promoting hot sex for five year olds, the Sex Education Forum's website has a fact-based approach to sex education in which primary school children learn about relationships with family and friends, body changes, feelings, emotions, keeping safe, life cycles, gender and other entirely age-appropriate information.

One of the CI's main fears is that control of sex education will be taken away from schools and handed to Government. This would particularly affect faith schools who can currently teach sex ed 'according to their ethos' which can mean anything from excellent fact-based information to morally biased, factually inaccurate religious propaganda. A unified approach to sex ed would seem like a good thing to most people, ensuring that all children are taught to the same standard, adequately prepared for adult life and that all teachers are well-trained and resourced. But the CI would rather treat children like mushrooms ; keep them in the dark and throw bullshit at them.

Not surprisingly, some of the offending extracts from current resources featured in the report talk about homosexuality in a morally neutral way and the CI will be having none of that.

The report also has action tips for parents about how to find out what is being taught in their child's school and how to complain if they need to. And the implication is that they will need to because 'It is important for parents to recognise that today's sex education is quite unlike anything they may have seen during their own school days'.

For most of us, this would be a good thing. But not for the CI. Take up arms: your child too could have this forced on them. No child is safe!

Mike Judge, head of communications at the CI said that: 'the current approach to sex education has comprehensively failed to reduce teenage pregnancy and abortion rates'. Checking statistics is apparently not his strong point; the rates are still some of the highest in Europe but the under-18 conception rate fell in 2009 to its lowest since the early 80s.

Jumping on the bandwagon is the Campaign For Real Education. That's 'real' as in archaic and fundamentalist. Nick Seaton of CRE commented that 'Some of this stuff could destroy someone's childhood if it upset them too much'. The website has such gems as 'SRE is little more than education in birth control' and 'Politicians required teachers to promote National Socialism in pre-war Nazi Germany and International Socialism in the former Soviet Union. Would a true democrat use schools for similar purposes here? Surely, if we were living in a genuine democracy, the law would allow parents the right to withdraw their child from all areas of PSHE/C, not just SRE'.

Firstly, citing the Nazis loses you any argument and secondly, parents can legally withdraw children as even the CI report notes. Maybe the CRE didn't get the memo. According to Ofsted figures, only 0.04% of parents currently do take their children out of sex ed lessons.(Ofsted 2002, Sex and Relationships HMI 433). This is not nearly enough as the CRE would prefer all parents to use the withdrawal method.

Not far behind the CRE is the Family Education Trust. I've already written about their lovely booklet, What is Love?. (In a nutshell, love is just saying no to the ugly sex until you are safely up the aisle. Or terrible, terrible things will fall upon you). I've also covered their report Too Much, Too Soon, which has such pearls of wisdom as 'there are some sexual practices that it may be better not to know anything about at all, at any age'. Sharp-eyed readers may notice the similarity in the title of this report and the current Christian Institute one. Copycats.

This time, the FET's Norman Wells said: 'Introducing sex education at an early age runs the risk of breaking down children's natural sense of reserve.

'Far from being a hindrance, children's natural inhibitions provide a necessary safeguard against sexual abuse and casual attitudes towards sexual intimacy later on'.

This seems to mean that if children are taught the facts, they are more likely to be abused. Both the logic and moral implications of this statement are loathsome.

These organisations do not represent the majority of parents, or even the majority of religious parents but they are loud, relentless and unashamed of using emotive, manipulative, evidence-free methods.

Finally, five year olds are not now and never will be encouraged to learn about anal sex.

Am I Not A Man? No I'm Bloody Well Not.

2011-03-05T16:57:00.009Z

I get mistaken for a man on a fairly regular basis. A lot of tall women suffer from this: Miranda Hart used the idea in an episode of her sitcom Miranda and Tamsin Greig mentioned it in a recent interview in the Radio Times. Are we some sort of reverse lady boys?

I've been mistaken for a man in India, North and South America, mainland Europe and Africa as well as here in the UK. Tall + blonde = American while tall + brunette = man, it seems. In France, a small child once pointed at me and said "Maman, un travelo!" (mummy - a tranny!). In Mombasa, a gang of kids trailed after me and my male travelling companion shouting 'Homosexuals!', thinking we were both men.

The problem is that people see what they expect to see, they don't look properly and fill in the gaps from scanty evidence because it's easier than closely inspecting everything and everyone they see. That would take too much time and effort for the brain. Unlike failing to discriminate between a rustle in the bushes and a tiger, there is little cost to getting gender wrong so no incentive to be more careful. Apart from getting a hard look from me. It used to upset me a lot as a teenager but now I'm used to it and can't (usually) be bothered to reply.

It's an example of confirmation bias.

In my case, they see something tall looming over them. If they're a shop assistant and sitting down, they look at where a head would be on an average size woman, don't see one and assume: man.

With confirmation bias, any further evidence that might disconfirm the initial hypothesis is ignored - hair, hips, make-up, breast size, voice. Information that confirms preconceptions or prejudices is favoured. Tall = Man. Tall = Man. Tall = Man.

There is a conscious or unconscious assumption still that women are petite, delicate things. A lady looks like Audrey Hepburn or Angelina Jolie not Miranda Hart - or me. I've had a charming gentleman lean out of his white van and inform me that I'm 'too tall for a girl'.

Sometimes they have the grace to apologise but very often after calling me Sir, they just carry on regardless even though they have recognised their mistake as I can tell from their expression.

Another response is a long conversation about how tall I am, whether my parents are tall, have I always been tall (yes, I was born this height), if I have trouble getting clothes/shoes/a boyfriend and can I please reach the jam down from the top shelf for them. It's like being public property in a way; people assume they can comment on my appearance (often coming up to me in public solely to do just that) in a way that they never would if I were black, for example (ooh, you're black, you're very black, are your parents black, do you like being black? etc etc etc).

Then there are the assumptions about my sexuality. And let's not even go into the fun I've had with short straight men over the years. No, I am not your personal Everest.

Ranting aside, the brain uses short cuts or heuristics in information processing. Heuristics are basic rules used to make decisions and judgements that work well in most cases (or we wouldn't have evolved the tendency to use them) but sometimes lead to errors. If height distribution is a bell curve with most women in the central bulge, then the height/gender heuristic works well. But for those of us at the lanky tail end of the curve, it fails.

In other words, it's not their fault for making a cognitive error, it's my fault for being freakishly tall (six foot and a tiny bit, if you've never met me).

So expecting people to open their eyes and look properly at me is not a realistic expectation: they have evolved to be fuckwits. Sorry, that's not very ladylike, is it?

Leading Apes Into Hell - the Spinster's Revenge

2011-02-12T17:09:00.023Z

A collection of tweets twitted in the run-up to Valentine's Day to add a bitter taint to the saccharine bliss of happy couples in no more than 140 characters. Now with added extras.

They that die maids, must lead apes into hell (old saying).

Preparing for Valentine's Day. Have bought gun and several boxes of ammo. Happy couples beware, I am the Spinster's Revenge and I am mighty.

Spinster's Revenge Valentine's Day Plan 2: Circulate divorce statistics.

Valentine's Day Spinster's Revenge 3: He's thinking of your best mate when he's kissing you. You know, the really pretty one.

Valentine Day Spinster's Revenge 4: In 2002 and 08 Saudi Arabia's religious police banned sale of all Valentine's Day items. Quite right too.

Valentine's Day Spinsters' Revenge 5: When she's blowing you, she's thinking about that lovely pair of shoes she's going to buy.

Valentine's Day Spinster's Revenge 6: Love will tear us apart, remember.

Valentine's Day Spinsters' Revenge 7: Love is like a butterfly - best asphyxiated and impaled on a pin.

Spinster's Revenge 8: Each man kills the thing he loves/From all let this be heard/Some do it with a bitter look/Some with a flattering word.

Valentine's Day Spinsters' Revenge 9: Andreas Capellanus - "True love can have no place between husband and wife" (The Art of Courtly Love).

Valentine's Day Spinsters' Revenge 10: Cupid is naked so he can crap all over you more easily. Sooner or later, he will.

(11) Love is handsome and love is fine/And love’s a jewel when it is new/But love grows old and waxes cold/And fades away like the morning dew

(12) What is commonly called love, namely the satisfying of a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh. Henry Fielding.

Valentine’s Day Spinster’s Revenge 13: Sooner or later that endearing little habit will make you want to stab him in the eye.

Valentine’s Day Spinster’s Revenge 14: Lock and load. Will the apes please form an orderly queue.

Notes:

The expression 'leading apes into hell' appears in The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, and John Donne's Paradoxes and Problems, for example. In all cases, a familiarity with the expression is assumed. Being a maid and a spinster were, in this case, synonymous.

A spinster was a female spinner - one of the few jobs available to unmarried women in earlier times. Similarly, the name Brewster means a female brewer, Webster a female weaver and Baxter a female baker.

Tweet 1: The intention is to shoot one half of the couple so that the other one is miserable. Shooting them both is far less effective. And bullets are not cheap.

Tweet 2: The median length of a marriage is 11.5 years. Cohabitees who then marry are 60% more likely to split up within 10 years.In 2008, of all decrees awarded to one partner, rather than jointly to both, 67% were awarded to the wife. The incidence of separation is particularly high around anniversary months. And if marriage is so great, why does the government try to bribe people to do it with tax breaks?

Tweet 8 is from The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

Tweet 9: Andreas Capellanus wrote The Art of Courtly Love, which I read at college (in Mediaeval French, not the original Latin). In common with many writers of the time, he thought romantic love was a terrible, destructive thing best avoided. See Guinevere and Lancelot, Tristan and Isolde.

Tweet 11: From the traditional song The Water is Wide

Valentine's Day is suffering from the recession. The 2010 V Day market was worth just over £232 million, compared with £290m in 2009. Over 2.3 million bunches of flowers were bought last year – 29% fewer than in 2009. The statistics don't indicate how many bunches of flowers were bought from the garage on the way home from work. Not do they include cack-handed cards made by small children that make parents go all teary-eyed.

There is an old belief that if you see an owl on Valentine's Day, you will die a spinster.

The Short Agenda

2011-01-27T13:46:00.006Z

I am currently being harried, vilified and persecuted in certain sections of the media about the policy of my bed and breakfast establishment, Tall Towers, of not allowing short people to stay.

It's true there is a sign in the lobby that says You Must Be At Least This Tall To Stay Here and that no one under five foot ten is welcome. It's true that Tall Towers is registered as a business for tax and Health & Safety. But it is also my home. And in my own home, it is my right to follow my own deeply held beliefs. As my website states: I have few rules but please note that out of a deep regard for height, I prefer to let double accommodation to tall people only. I will not allow short people to share a bed under my roof in which they might procreate more short people.

Bleeding heart liberal Guardian-reading pinko commie nazis may try to make us believe that short people are normal but why should my beliefs be trampled on by their tiny feet? This is not the England my ancestors fought and died for. The obsession with equality has now reached ludicrous, as well as oppressive, proportions. I am not shortophobic, I am an honest, law-abiding person. I am just standing up for what I believe. Which is that short people are just plain wrong.

Some may question the wisdom of sinking my life savings into this establishment and then restricting who can stay here, especially in these hard times, but I am not in this for the money. I do it because I love meeting people and offering them hospitality. Tall people.

There have been incidences of short people wearing high heels, pretending to be tall in order to book a double room. This is persecution and publicity-seeking, pure and simple.

A tall MP has come to my defence. She said: "If Tessera ran a grocery shop which refused to serve short people then that would be discrimination but to refuse to facilitate their activity by providing a double bed is not. It is the once lawful exercise of conscience against particular deeds".

It gets worse. The attempt to foist the short agenda onto society has spread to education. In short geography, children will be forced to study Japan and regions of the world where pygmies live when they should be studying Holland, Scandinavia and the Rift Valley (home of the Maasai). In maths, they will be forced to study only short division instead of long division and in science they will learn about the evolution of the pygmy shrew, chihuahua and the bee hummingbird. Alas, this short curriculum is no laughing matter. Absurd as it sounds, this is but the latest attempt to brainwash children with propaganda under the camouflage of education. It is an abuse of childhood.

And the other side of that particular coin, as we are now discovering, is that values which were once the moral basis for British society are now deemed to be beyond the pale. Tall values.

When qualified, accredited therapists offer out of the goodness of their hearts to cure people of being short, they are hounded and threatened with being struck off, and their witnesses are intimidated by the short mafia. In America, these cures have been made illegal but British bodies (bless them) are holding out.

As if this wasn't enough, now comes, apparently, short drugs policy. When the Government announced the appointment of GP Dr Lofty to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, he was targeted in an astonishing attack for his 'stringent views'. For he is also a member of the Lanky Community, which is dedicated to re-establishing tall values in society. Dr Lofty has often stayed at my B&B with his lovely tall wife and three fine tall children.

Short people have their place in society, which is reaching for things on low shelves. They are welcome to stay in their own B&Bs, to watch short films and to eat shortbread. They are not welcome in my B&B. My health is failing but I will defend my beliefs to my last, bankrupt breath.

All donations or complaints should be addressed to my lawyers, the Longshanks Legal Centre.

The Death of Atheism?

2011-01-12T17:04:00.005Z

Atheists are breeding themselves out of existence. Or rather, not breeding. The religious, meanwhile, have evolved to go forth and multiply - according to the media.

The first round of 'news' stories was based on a paper called The Reproductive Benefits of Religious Affiliation by Michael Blume. The story has now come back because of a paper by Robert Rowthorn: Religion, fertility and genes: a dual inheritance model

Blume says that religious people have evolved to produce more children than the non-religious, even in developed countries (he cites Switzerland as an example). He suggests that this is because belonging to a religious community provides more co-operation in child-rearing and that such communities particularly benefit women of reproductive age as religion promotes marriage and fidelity.

This got reported (for example in the Sunday Times) as 'over evolutionary timescales of hundreds or thousands of years, atheists had fewer children and the societies they belong to are likely to disappear'.

Evolutionary timescales are rather more than hundreds of years - unless you're a fruit fly. The reporting ignores many other key factors. For example, most atheists have religious parents, they don't just spontaneously generate. There are more openly atheist people now than there have ever been. Figures on church attendance, religious affiliation and belief in the UK, for example, showed a marked decline in younger people - who have yet to breed.

However, in many societies, it is still hard - even dangerous - to be openly atheist; social traditions that encourage and facilitate large families are likely to influence even non-believers who live (covertly) in them. The Atheist Doomsday scenario also ignores the fact that in third world countries, people have more children regardless of their religion because they are needed to work to support the family and because more children die young. The research looks only at birth rates, not long-term survival rates. While a country's religion may encourage this kind of breeding, there are many more factors than faith.

The reporting also assumes that the current geo-political and religious status quo will hold for long enough into the future for evolution to have an effect and for atheists to be wiped out. Moreover, religion may apparently encourage fidelity but human nature is sneaky just like all animal nature. Believers were delighted with March of the Penguins as it appeared to show faithful penguin couples - except they're not. Just like many other animals, penguins have evolved to be opportunistic and will sneak off for some extra-conjugal mating whenever they get the chance. If the punishment for being caught is high (like stoning, say), this may deter some but will just increase ingenuity in others who will pass on the sneaky gene to their children...

Furthermore, how many atheists were there even 2000 years ago let alone 100,000? Without knowing this, we can't even begin to look at any possible evolutionary effects. There was no non-believing control group in the Iron Age.

The Telegraph version of Robert Rowthorn's paper is 'Believers' gene will spread religion, says academic'.

Except he doesn't. Rowthorn posits various possible scenarios. One is that religion becomes more widespread because religious people breed more so the genetic propensity to believe and breed spreads. He mentions the Blume study. But in that study, religiosity is measured by attendance. This may work in most current Western cultures but in some parts of the world, non-attendance is almost impossible because of social pressures. Similarly, in Elizabethan times, it was illegal not to go to church so by that measure, everyone was religious.

In addition, Rowthorn says that 'heritability studies suggest there is currently significant variation in genetic predisposition towards religion'. So not all religous people are equally religious although he does assume that 'all religious adults... have the same fertility irrespective of their genes', which is quite a big assumption.

Another scenario is that religions where people do not marry out will continue to breed at a much faster rate than the rest of the population - he cites the Amish and Haredi Jews as examples. However, Rowthorn points out that while they could vastly increase their numbers, as groups grow, the chances of defection increase as members are more likely to come into contact with outsiders and because it is harder to control larger groups. As people from third world countries move to the West, there will be economic restraints on having very large families to factor in.

He doesn't look at the problems of inbreeding in such groups, which may reduce survival fitness as harmful mutations spread.

Finally, he posits a scenario where defectors from religions take their religious genes with them. Presumably these are the weaker variants or people wouldn't be able to lose their religion in the first place. Going with his argument, these defectors will take their genes into the general population where they will manifest themselves in secular ways, for example as a respect for authority. He doesn't consider, for example, the fact that some defectors leave because they are gay and can live openly in mainstream society. The likelihood of them breeding is considerably reduced (although not eliminated).

Two rather over-simplified papers base their findings on very narrow parameters and assumptions, ignore complicating factors and other potential influences (culture, economics for example) even though genes never work in isolation but in tandem with the environment. They are reported as heralding the death of atheism.

It's true that some developed countries are producing fewer children. Just to muddy the waters, the birth rate in Italy and Ireland, strongly Catholic countries, is also falling as people ignore the priests and control their fertility.

While some religious groups in this country might be only too happy to see the death of the 'Dawkins' gene, they might also like to consider the scare stories about how Muslims will out-breed all other groups in Europe. Not so smug now, then.

Should you join a gym in January? No.

2011-01-07T17:22:00.010Z

January is traditionally the time when we're supposed to make health-based resolutions - lose weight, drink less, quit smoking, get fit. Weight Watchers and their imitators ramp up their ad campaign and even Sainsbury's is selling rowing machines.

If your resolution is to join a gym - forget it.

Don't get me wrong, I love the gym. I'm there four mornings a week.

But there are lots of reasons why you shouldn't join a gym.

1. It's expensive. You're looking at around £500 a year for a decent gym. Some are cheaper if you pay for the whole year up front, others let you spread the payment with monthly direct debit. You may think that paying all in one go will make you commit. It won't. You'll end up having arguments with yourself about why you should go and why there are excellent reasons for not going and damn, I feel guilty and I'll really go next week, honestly, just shut up and let me eat this pizza in peace. Personality disorders will ensue.

Monthly payments might seem a safer option but many people don't get around to cancelling their DD and some gyms don't make it easy to quit once they've signed you up. And on top of the annual fee, you may well have to pay a joining fee which has no purpose other than gouging more money out of you to pay for the huge effort of putting a bit of data into a computer. Gyms rely on people joining in January but more than that, they rely on them not going more than a few times. Figures vary, but up to 60% of people drop out before six months. If everyone who joined a gym went and kept going, you wouldn't be able to get in the door. If you're part of that 60%, thank you for paying for my gym to get lots of new equipment that I can use in peace.

2. Guilt/punishment. A woman in my gym said to me 'When I'm as slim as you, I can stop coming'. This is a common attitude - exercise as penance or punishment. I pointed out to her that the only reason I stay in shape is that I keep going. She wasn't happy. A lot of women (and it is mostly women) see exercise as something to be endured to achieve a goal - generally weight loss. They hate every moment. Exercise speeds up weight loss but it's still going to take time. I've seen women weighing themselves after every session as if they might magically have dropped five kilos just by flogging themselves half to death on the step machine for 40 minutes.

Exercise burns calories but not very many. It works by perking up your metabolism so you burn more calories even when resting. So a weekend of beer and pizza cannot be atoned for in the gym on Monday morning. If you weigh around 155 pounds, an hour of vigorous aerobics or weight training could burn around 490 calories. One slice of pepperoni pizza has around 350 calories. That's one slice. You need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in to lose one pound. So if you ran really really fast for over seven hours and ate nothing, you might lose a pound. Or die.

3. It's hard. If exercise was easy, everyone would do it and we'd all look like athletes. It takes time. Muscles do not just ping out overnight. That's why so many competitive body builders use steroids. I worked in a gym for a few years while I was researching my PhD and taught weight training circuits. I watched sane, sensitive men become a competitive, grunting mass of testosterone as soon as they got near the big muscly men. They'd try to lift the heaviest weights they could find, get disheartened that they didn't turn into Mr Universe and give up. Or do themselves a mischief.

4. It's time consuming. If you're going to be in the gym three or four times a week, it has to become part of your life. You have to get up early or make time in the evenings and weekends. You'll also have to lug a heavy bag full of stinky clothes around with you.

5. The gym isn't for everyone. Weight training, cardio work or classes don't suit everyone. Some people find it hard to work out alone, others don't like doing it with other people. And not everyone can cope with the changing rooms. This may sound like an odd thing to say, but some women are so painfully unhappy with their bodies that they writhe around under a towel to get changed and won't shower in the communal showers if the individual cubicles are busy. I can't speak for men as I've never been in a men's changing room (damn it) but I'm told there are man-type pressures too, mostly around eye contact while naked and getting your nob out in front of other men. You will have to get naked in front of others at some point, if only for a moment. You will also go bright red, get all sweaty and your hair will look terrible. Gyms are full of mirrors so you will see yourself looking like crap from every angle. This can be hard to take if there's a cute guy/girl working out next to you but if you're more interested in pulling than pumping, go to the pub.

Obviously, some people do join a gym, love it and stick with it. I did. It's part of my life and I don't have to think about it, I just do it - and enjoy it. This doesn't make me a Good Person, it makes me someone who suits the gym.

6. It's January. It's horrible outside, especially early in the morning when it's cold, dark and probably wet as you head to the gym. And cold, dark and probably wet when you leave work. Setting yourself tough targets at this time of year can be pretty unrealistic, a triumph of faith over reason. Give yourself a break. Start with something you may actually achieve. Go for a fast walk for half an hour three or four times a week for three months. If you can't manage that, there's no point doing anything more demanding (or expensive). Your credit card is already weeping after Christmas. If you can manage it, do you still want to join a gym? There are lots of other ways to exercise that may suit you better.

7. Suck it and see. A lot of private gyms do free tasters, a one day or sometimes three day pass. Just going to a gym, looking around and getting the sales pitch isn’t enough. You need to go at the time you are planning to go to see how crowded it is, who else is in there (big scary men hogging the Smith machine or women hogging the step machines, for example) and whether what’s on offer really suits you. Council-run gyms don’t tend to do this; for health and safety reasons they won’t let you loose on your own without doing an induction course. This applies even if you’re a regular gym user so it’s not so much about making sure you don’t injure yourself as getting more money out of you.

Chat to the staff while you’re there. Do they know their stuff? Do they look you up and down and raise an eyebrow? Do they give a toss? Do they speak something approaching English?

Then sniff the changing room. If it smells like something died in there, walk away.

8. Don't say to me 'I really should join a gym' or 'I've been to the gym three times now' or even 'Can you design me an exercise programme to do at home?' You may be the exception to the rule but I can pretty much guarantee that if I spend time and effort designing a workout for you and teaching you how to do it, you'll do it for a week. Or maybe two. And then make excuses every time you see me. And then hate me because I make you feel guilty. I really don't need it.

9. If you ignore everything I've said and join a gym - hoorah! If you're still going regularly in a year's time, let me know and we'll have a really big cake. Because gym + cake = balanced lifestyle. It works for me.

Who Killed Christmas?

2010-12-14T16:17:00.009Z

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat and, inevitably, the sound of voices struggling to reach the high notes in Hark the Herald Angels Sing is joined by the voices accusing atheists, secularists and anyone else they can drag in of killing Christmas.

It's not like anyone is standing outside churches stopping people going in but yet again, we are cast as Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham telling his minion to 'call off Christmas'.

Archbishop Rowan Williams isn't resting very merry, being seriously dismayed about school nativity plays and public carol singing being banned. Some schools aren't doing nativity plays this year, which is a sign as clear as the Star of Bethlehem that we're all going to hell in a handcart, apparently. He said that 'most people of other religions and cultures both love the story and respect the message'. No empirical evidence to substantiate this claim was supplied.

Meanwhile, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles is ding donging merrily about a 12 year old story. It is traditional to tell stories about the dead coming back at Christmas, after all. In 1998, Birmingham Council allegedly called their celebrations Winterval and banned all Christian elements from them. Except they didn't, they still used angels in their publicity materals and promoted carol concerts, among other things. Pickles commented that "Shoppers want to see Christmas lights, Christmas trees, carol services and nativity scenes, and councils should not hesitate in supporting them". Has he been down Oxford Street lately?

And then there's the Mail getting all deep and crisp and even about supermarkets not selling enough Christmas cards with religious imagery on. They're joined by the Evangelical Alliance whose Don Horrocks said: "There has been a rise in cards that say 'Season's greetings' or 'Happy holidays' which is evidence of the speeding up of the trend of stripping the religion out of Christian festivals'. Shame on you all for buying cards with robins on instead of a nativity scene surrounded by seasonally inappropriate snow for that particular part of the world.

Joining these three wise men is Archbishop Carey and his I'm Not Ashamed leaflet encouraging people to be proud of their religion. Mighty dread has seized his troubled mind about nativity plays, cards and 'winter lights' instead of Christmas lights too. Ironically, he also says in the leaflet: 'There are aspects of Christianity of which I am ashamed. I am ashamed of the way in which the external form of religion has got in the way of real faith'. Would that be external forms like trees, cards and small children with tea towels on their heads pretending to be shepherds washing their socks?

A few festive statistics:

According to a ComRes survey, 46% of people think that 'The birth of Jesus is irrelevant to my Christmas', 54% think it's over-rated (bah, humbug) and 61% think it's mainly for children.

When asked if they would be attending a Christmas church service this year, 36% said they would. However, only 5% of people go to church at Christmas and only 2.1% take communion in C of E churches - and that's the C of E's own data. The spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak, especially when it's full of mulled wine.

What about all these Christmas traditions that we're supposedly banning or spurning? The Christmas tree was made popular by Prince Albert in 1834 and the first commercial Christmas cards came out in 1843 (and were never solely religious) - not exactly ancient traditions. These are hardly the 'religion' part of Christmas anyway.

Trees are a pagan solstice symbol and carols also have pagan roots, some of which still show through, like The Holly and the Ivy and Deck the Halls. And let's not even go into the fact that there is almost nothing about the whole Christmas story that wasn't pinched from earlier mythologies.

Yes, let's indulge for a moment, it is Christmas after all. As the Rt Rev John Davies, Bishop of the Church in Wales said: "If , in a strict sense, the stories are deemed not to be historically true in each and every detail, it does not mean that they do not convey truth, the most profound truth". Santa legends also convey profound truths about being nice not naughty. Some of the Scandinavian ones have dire warnings about what happens to children who don't behave that make hell look like a soft option. If you're going to promote some made-up ideas that have 'profound truths' then you've got to expect a bit of competition. Another Christmas morality tale about good and evil, sacrifice and redemption is Die Hard, which has the advantage that the saviour gets his shirt off. And if you like a heavy dose of saccharine and emotional manipulation with your profound truths, there's always Dickens.

Nativity plays in schools are also comparatively recent. In the past, religious Christmas drama was either a Mystery play or a Mummers play - a mixture of Christian and very pagan elements, both performed by adults. Culture evolves, traditions come and go. Trying to cling to a few fairly modern semi-pagan traditions is not going to bring people back into the churches or revive their interest in religion.

If Christianity was all peace on earth and goodwill to men (and women) then it might be more popular.

It's not all of us non-believers who are killing the Spirit of Christmas, it's the mass indifference of the public who would rather be at home with family and friends eating mince pies and watching Doctor Who come down from on high to save the world. There'll be carol singers around later, that's Christmassy enough. Who knows, they might even be in tune.

Wassail.

United Nations Human Rights Fail

2010-12-04T16:12:00.002Z

The UN general assembly passes a resolution every two years condemning extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions. The resolution specifies killing for racial, national, ethnic or religious reasons and the killing of refugees, street children and indigenous people, among other groups.

But this time, it has left sexual orientation off the list with an amendment replacing a resolution that has stood for the last ten years. Instead there is a rather feeble 'discriminatory reasons on any basis'.

There are 76 countries where homosexuality is a criminal offence, six where it's punishable by death, which are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Sudan and Yemen - and Uganda is considering adding the death penalty to its laws criminalising homosexuality.

The amendment passed by 79 votes to 70. Seventeen countries abstained and 26 were absent. The 79 were the six where homosexuality is punishable by death and the rest included Uganda, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Lebanon, Kenya, Algeria, Tunisia, Jamaica, Malaysia, China and the Bahamas. South Africa also voted for it, despite being the first country to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Two other countries in favour of removing sexual orientation from the list were the Russian Federation and Qatar where the next two FIFA World Cups will be held.

Britain and the US condemned the motion. But the resolution was approved by the committee, which includes all 192 member states with 165 in favour, 10 abstentions (including the USA) and no votes against. This means that even though 70 countries voted against the amendment, not one voted against the final resolution.

The Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions has highlighted documented cases of extrajudicial killings on the grounds of sexual orientation including individuals facing the death penalty for consensual sex; individuals tortured to death by State actors because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation; paramilitary groups killing individuals because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation as part of “social cleansing” campaigns; individuals murdered by police officers with impunity because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation; and States failing to investigate hate crimes and killings of people because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation.

So not only can you be murdered for being gay, you could well be killed just because someone thinks you are, or it suits them to think you are. Being bi or transgender is just as dangerous.

There is a belief in many member states that homosexuality is a western disease, that being gay is a choice and that it's un-Christian or un-African or un-Islamic. Western countries are often reluctant to criticise or get involved with the laws and cultures of other countries for fear of being accused of cultural imperialism.

Any brutal practise that is claimed to be traditional, religious or cultural - such as FGM, for example - can be considered off-limits whereas actions like the killing of street children are widely condemned. Moral relativism rears its ugly head, especially when the religion card is played, so critics back off and do the dance of cultural appeasement.

It's much easier to come to the defence of children, indigenous peoples or other groups that are not condemned by orthodox religion, for a start. There are very few countries that disapprove of homosexuality for other than religious reasons (although China is one of them).

The fact that the UN previously included sexual orientation in the list didn't stop many countries actively persecuting and executing LGBT people but now that it is not even explicitly on the list, there will be even less incentive to respect their human rights or to be covert about the murders, LGBT rights workers will have an even harder job and lives will be lost as the West stands by and wrings its hands.

Did He Or Didn't He? The Pope and Condoms

2010-11-23T20:21:00.002Z

The Pope's comments on condom use have been hailed by campaigning groups and the liberal media as a breakthrough, a long-overdue recognition of the gap between dogma and reality. But what did he actually say? And, more to the point, what did he actually mean?

Last year, Benedict said that condoms worsened the spread of AIDS and the Vatican did nothing to contradict Cardinal Trujillo who claimed that the virus could permeate condoms. They have consistently preached that abstinence is the only moral defense against HIV/AIDS while millions die around the world.

The Pope's latest message to the world was part of an interview with German Catholic journalist Peter Seewald for a new book, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times.

It appears that the Pope said condom use can be acceptable in certain cases, where the protection of life was the primary aim, not the prevention of life (ie, contraception). He apparently said that male prostitutes could use condoms as a step towards 'acting responsibly' - because there is no chance of contraception between two men, presumably. Not that the Vatican has shifted its position on homosexuality one inch.

Benedict has caused a right old flap at HQ with spokesmen falling over themselves to explain what he 'really' meant. Rev Federico Lombardi said the remarks were unprecedented but that they were given 'colloquially', not as part of official church teaching. In case that wasn't clear, Sandro Magister, a Vatican reporter, explained that there is a 'graduated spectrum of authority' between official church teaching and conversational papal remarks.

The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, broke an embargo to say that condom use was justified in some cases. But then the Rev Joseph Fession whose Ignatius Press published the English version weighed in and said that the Italian translation was wrong. The German and English versions talk about male prostitutes while the Italian version refers to female prostitutes. The Pope approved only the German version.

Confusion reigns. Asked by the website of the US-based National Catholic Register whether Benedict's statement indicated that in some cases condoms were permissible, Cardinal Raymond Burke said: "No, it's not." Again, get your act together, guys. Did some of you not get the memo?

But at a press conference in the Vatican to mark the launch of the book, Lombardi said: "I personally asked the pope if there was a serious, important problem in the choice of the masculine over the feminine," Lombardi said. "He told me: 'No.'"

However, a spokesman for the charity Caritas said that bishops conferences in Southern Africa in 2000 and in Chad in 2002 had already sent out pastoral letters to church workers advising them to follow their conscience when advising married couples where one partner was infected.

Other Catholic outlets jumped in to say that the Pope had not changed the church's teaching on condom use and that L'Osservatore - the Vatican's own newspaper, remember - had betrayed him. Blaming the media for getting the wrong end of the stick or going for sensational headlines is often entirely justified, but in this case, it's the Vatican's own mouthpiece that is getting the blame. The right hand really doesn't know what the left hand is doing. You'd really think that after nearly 2000 years at this game they would have got their act together.

What the Pope said was (probably, until the next refutation or 'clarification'):

'There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be the first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way towards recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection, that can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality'. The Pope added that the church can never regard condom use as a 'real or moral solution'.

What the 'humanization of sexuality' might be is anyone's guess. Presumably, he means sex only between a lady and a gentleman who are married and want to make babies.

Condoms still absolutely cannot be used for contraception. One of the pope's most senior officials, Cardinal Rino Fisichella, told the press conference it was "intrinsically an evil". Could we get some 'clarification' on that?

Maybe this has opened a debate. Maybe the Catholic Church will be forced to discuss condoms and HIV/AIDS. Maybe charity workers on the frontline will continue ignoring HQ and taking the more humane course of action. Whatever happens, the Vatican comes out of this looking like a bunch of amateurs who can't even give a consistent message.

The Pope explained earlier in the book why nothing a Pope says in an interview should be regarded as authoritative. Except for all the other parts of the book that the Vatican doesn't disagree with. So what it boils down to is that the Pope was just having a bit of a chat, what he said doesn't count because he wasn't wearing his big Popey hat at the time and didn't start the sentence with 'Simon says...'

If there are any further 'clarifications', I'll post them here.

Why I Am Not A Humanist

2010-11-17T20:31:00.004Z

The talk at Skeptics in the Pub last night was Objections to Humanism. Here are some of mine:

Andrew Copson of the BHA spoke at length about evolution, science, morality without religion and the value of optimism. While there was nothing much to disagree with, nor was there anything specific or unique to humanism. I asked in the Q&A what is added by claiming as humanist the acceptance of evolution, the value of scientific enquiry and so on. The reply (eventually) was that 'It's just a word thing' and that humanism is a useful label. But labels are useful only if they make it clear what something is.

There are plenty of people who accept evolution and subscribe to a non-religious moral code but who do not call themselves humanist. It is however a useful bit of soft soap if you're a politician who can't bring themselves to admit publicly that you're an atheist.

According to the BHA website: 'Humanism is the view that we can make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values and that we can live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs'.

Although they make no claim to be the sole purveyors of this view, they also make no claim to say anything original or to add anything to these views. In other words, humanism has no USP.

The website continues: 'Humanists seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves. We choose to take responsibility for our actions and work with others for the common good'.

Again, nothing unique there, no added value.

One argument against humanism by some believers is that it denies the 'specialness' of humanity. This is an argument levelled against evolutionists and atheists too - even its accusers can't find anything original about it to attack.

Copson countered this by quoting (and agreeing with) another humanist (whose name I didn't catch) who said: 'It is love that makes sex human'.

Does this mean that sex without love is not human or is less than fully human? Billions of people throughout history might disagree with him. Condemning or at least dismissing sex without love is sailing close to certain religious points of view. Moreover, it is rather prudish and twee. Or maybe whoever said it just wasn't having the right kind of sex.

It was said that it is the bond between us that makes us special. There was no real explanation of what 'special' means. He did allow that we are possibly special only to each other but this still supports an anthropocentric view. Why do we need to see ourselves as special? Certainly we are different from other animals but they are also very different from each other.

There was also a retrospective look at various philosophers and others throughout history whose ideas were described as humanist in some form. This is like firing shots at a wall and then drawing a target round them. The people mentioned were not humanists, most of them existed before the term was coined. Democritus and Epicurus, for example, were cited as forefathers of humanism but they are just as much the precursors of scientific rationalism. Nothing is gained by tagging them as proto-humanists except to try and give humanism some sort of historical weight and worth.

The BHA have claimed that there are 17 million humanists in the UK after a poll found that 36% of people have a naturalistic world view. This will be news to 16.999 million of them. Nothing is gained for the cause if people are humanist without knowing it and trying to claim 17 million kind of looks a bit needy.

Humanism as a world view is sometimes accused of being 'just' an alternative to religion. Although Copson denied this, many humanists say that humanism gives them an identity, a worldview and set of moral values/rules similar to those provided by religion but without any supernatural element. In this case, humanism appears to be the methadone to the opiate of religion.

The BHA provide non-religious celebrants for funerals and other ceremonies. This is a much-needed service but could quite easily exist independently of humanism. They just happen to be the organisation behind this service, but they need not be.

There were possibly stronger reasons for joining a humanist group in the past when religious people and values dominated and non-believers of any kind were often isolated. But with current technology, wherever you live and whatever you believe, you can find like-minded people. There is of course still a value for some people in meeting up with others who share their worldview - we are social animals after all - but humanism is no more significant a definition than being a member of any other special interest club that contributes to or informs your identity and relationship with others.

The non-religious are still under-represented in some areas of public life while religious groups are accorded privileges so it can be useful to have a term to set yourself apart and distance yourself from claims made by religious leaders to represent the whole of society. But humanist does this no better than atheist, agnostic, non-believer, rationalist, freethinker, secularist and others.

To identify as humanist is to identify as either atheist or agnostic along with some or all of a rather vague set of ethical and pro-science statements. But for me, it's such an inchoate, nebulous concept that I can't engage with it at all.

Freedom of Expression Under Seige

2010-11-12T11:36:00.011Z

There's a scene near the end of the Rutles movie, All You Need is Cash, where Eric Manchester, the Rutle Corp Press Agent (played by Michael Palin), says: Suddenly, everyone became amazingly litigious. I remember I'd get up in the morning. Sue someone. Check in the papers that I hadn't been fired. Go to the office. Sue someone. Pick up the morning's writs. Sue the bank. Go out for lunch. Sue the restaurant. Get back in, collect the writs that had been received that afternoon. Read the papers. Phone the papers. Sue the papers. Then go home. Sue the wife.

Freedom of expression is currently under attack and it's no joke.

Firstly, there's Twittergate. Paul Chambers tweeted a not especially funny remark and has lost his job, got a criminal record and is facing a fine of thousands of pounds after an appeal at the Crown Court failed. Martin Robbins covers the story here. Chambers tweeted: Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!! He was found guilty under section 127 of the 2003 Communications Act:

Improper use of public electronic communications network
(1)
A person is guilty of an offence if he—
(a)
sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character; or
(b)
causes any such message or matter to be so sent.
(2)
A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he—
(a)
sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false,
(b)
causes such a message to be sent; or
(c)
persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network.
(3)
A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or to both.
(4)
Subsections (1) and (2) do not apply to anything done in the course of providing a programme service (within the meaning of the Broadcasting Act 1990 (c. 42)).

Then there's Dalia Nield who is under threat of being sued for saying that a cream which claims to increase bust size 'by up to 8.4%' is unlikely to work. Nield is a prominent plastic surgeon and has serious concerns about both the efficacy and the safety of Boob Job cream. According to the website, 'Boob Job works with your natural fat cells. As the fat cells move around the body after eating, boob job 'blocks' the fat into the area where the product has been applied, so the bust and décolleté areas. You will see a gradual increase in cup size within 56 days as well as gaining an instant lifting and firming effect.'.

Then there is the couple suing the RSPB which said that the couple's research may have harmed the black grouse that they were studying and that their methods were 'untried and untested'.

The Campaign for Libel Reform lists many others who either have been sued or who are threatened.

It's important to remember that it's not just the UK's shameful libel laws that are threatening freedom of expression. There is 'defamation of religion', a tactic used by some religious groups to shut down any criticism or even discussion of beliefs and practices. These religious groups claim the right not to be offended, questioned, challenged or called to account. The National Secular Society has written a document about the dangers here (in the interests of full disclosure, I wrote some of it).

As Resolution 1510 (2006)4 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe points out: 'What is likely to cause substantial offence to persons of a particular religious persuasion will vary significantly from time to time and from place to place'. Offence is a good tactic because it's so subjective, personal and nebulous.

Another tactic is to claim so-called Christianophobia or Islamophobia or to conflate race with religion, stifling debate with accusations of persecution and racism.

Resolution 1510 (2006) by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe states that:
1. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe reaffirms that there cannot be a democratic society without the fundamental right to freedom of expression. The progress of society and the development of every individual depend on the possibility of receiving and imparting information and ideas. This freedom is not only applicable to expressions that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive but also to those that may shock, offend or disturb the state or any sector of the population, in accordance with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ETS No. 5).

In the UK, the crime of religiously aggravated offence introduced in 2006 represents a new kind of blasphemy law and the crime of religiously aggravated insulting behaviour carries a sentence of up to 7 years in prison. The original blasphemy law was abolished in March 2008. Professional offence-takers in religious communities have already begun to exploit this new avenue of restricting criticism and comment.

A sample of attempts by religious groups to stifle freedom of expression:

Waterstones bookshop was threatened by Christian Voice and cancelled a reading at a Cardiff branch by Welsh poet Patrick Jones.

A statue by the artist Terrence Koh at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead provoked outrage and condemnation by Christians.

Behzti, a play depicting rape in a Sikh temple, provoked violent protests and thousands of pounds of damage at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in December 2004. The theatre was forced to cancel the play on safety grounds and playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti fled into hiding after receiving death threats.

The London exhibition of the work of Maqbool Fida Husain was closed after threats of violence from Hindu fundamentalists in 2006.

Jerry Springer – the Opera provoked street protests, threats to theatres and the publicizing of private addresses of BBC executives after it was shown on television - even though most of the complainants hadn't even seen it.

And of course, there was the Danish cartoons incident. More recently, religious groups tried to get a TV advert for Marie Stopes clinics banned and an ice cream ad was banned by the ASA after just six complaints because it showed two priests about to kiss.

Freedom of expression, scientific debate and even the ability to make flippant remarks on Twitter can no longer be taken for granted. Do not criticise me, do not question me, do not challenge me and, above all, do not offend me. Dark days.

Mass Blog for Libel Reform

2010-11-10T20:27:00.002Z

Today marks the first anniversary of the Free Speech Is Not For Sale report. I'm joining hundreds of other bloggers all over the world in solidarity against England’s draconian libel laws.

Like most bloggers, I don’t get paid for my writing, so if someone decided to sue me for libel, I would be in deep trouble and would have to sell some of my internal organs (assuming anyone would want them after the heavy use they've had).

Wikipedia has a good page on the history of English libel laws here. In particular, note “McLibel” and Simon Singh vs the BCA cases, both of which really brought this issue into the public sphere. These were occasions when big institutions (McDonalds and the British Chiropractic Association) decided to sue for vast sums of money when someone dared to speak out against them. The publicity from these cases was enough that eventually the claimants backed down, but for many lower profile cases, this isn’t necessarily going to happen, and the defendants involved could be financially ruined, the costs really are astronomical.

The Libel Reform Campaign website has a list of people who have been sued for libel in England a) over the most trivial things and b) involving people with no direct links to England in the first place. If you post something online on your Blogger or WordPress site, or on Twitter, or even allow comments to be published on your blog, then there is a high chance that you are also at risk of being sued.

If you haven’t already done so, please sign the petition to reform these heinous laws. It doesn’t matter where you live or what nationality you are, anyone can sign it, and if you’d like to make a donation when you’re done, even better.

We’ve got to put an end to things like this.

As a footnote, I didn't have time to write my own blog on this today as I was busy writing about SEX so I pretty much cut and pasted Carmen's and changed a few words, so if she gets sued, so do I...

What is Love?

2010-11-08T16:36:00.011Z

In July last year I wrote about a guide for parents by the Family Education Trust(aka Family & Youth Concern) about Sex and Relationships Education (SRE). Not content with trying to cause fear and loathing in parents, now they have written a leaflet for teenagers called What is Love?

The leaflet would be easily dismissed as the work of yet another small but vocal Christian group trying to impose their moralistic values on young people were it not being sent to all secondary schools.

For anyone unfamiliar with the FET, run by Norman Wells, it's a Christian organisation with a certain not entirely unexpected agenda. There is no mention of faith in the leaflet, however. Is that because the FET has realised young people don't like being preached at and is trying to be covert?

So what is love? In a nutshell, love is just saying no to the ugly sex until you are safely up the aisle. Or terrible, terrible things will fall upon you.

The leaflet is full of super advice. Here's a selection of it:

'First of all, we need to recognise that not all love is true. There is such a thing as false love and many people confuse it for the real thing'.

Because young people respond so well to being patronised... With any luck, most of them will stop reading at this point.

What is this false love? It's 'physical attraction, infatuation or lust'.

Just in case you've never heard of lust, there's a helpful definition: 'Lust is the longing to use another person for the fulfilment of your own selfish desires... You will never find love through sexual encounters based on lust. Lust will leave you empty, frustrated and unfulfilled every time'.

Just in case we can't understand that, there's a case study about Tom and Jen who spend a lot of time chatting online and texting and 'who find in each other the fulfilment of their sexual desires'. Call me cynical but I strongly suspect they are Made Up. It sounds to me like they're having a pretty good time. But no, their relationship is doomed to fail because they are being Selfish.

Poor Tom and Jen don't know that true love 'will last a lifetime', it is 'more powerful than the strongest feelings and emotions'. Huh? Love is not a feeling or emotion?

So what should they do? 'When you truly love someone, you will keep yourself exclusively for them. This is one of the reasons why sexual intimacy belongs in marriage'.

Here we go. The abstinence message. Once more, with feeling: all the evidence says abstinence teaching doesn't work.

The Government has been consulting on guidelines for SRE. The second reading of the Bill is on 11 February 2011. The consultation document clearly states that 'research evidence does not support the use of an approach to sex and relationships education that only teaches abstinence' and 'that schools should use a range of evidence-based teaching methods'. Has the FET squeaked in under the wire before the Government guidelines are finalised in case abstinence-only teaching is banned and no school would be allowed to use or distribute this leaflet?

SRE is not just about sex, it covers all kinds of relationships and how to negotiate them, how to cope with bullying, how to be a responsible adult and so on.

In the document for parents about sex education, the FET mixes propaganda with what I shall charitably call factual inaccuracies, such as: there is no good evidence against abstinence, that teenage pregnancies are rising therefore sex education doesn't work and should be abandoned, that there are moral absolutes, that homosexuality is not a 'normal and natural lifestyle'. The FET believes that 'young people do not need to learn about a wide range of 'sexualities' and sexual behaviours; they do not need detailed information about the full range of contraceptive methods and they do not need to be presented with a menu of sexual options from which they can make 'informed choices' when they feel they are 'ready' to become sexually active'. He adds that 'there are some sexual practices that it may be better not to know anything about at all, at any age'.

The FET policy is to treat young people like mushrooms - keep them in the dark and throw horseshit at them.

The parents' guide also states that: 'Modern sex education is characterised by a lack of honesty...'

That's an interesting definition of 'honesty' from an organisation that has a rather malleable relationship with the truth and evidence.

What's more, saying that sex belongs only in marriage and is only for reproduction isn't going to play too well with the very many children of single parents.

Research (as opposed to made-up stuff) shows that young people want honest, complete, fact-based sex education from people they trust, as Dr Petra Boynton has written about.

The message that postponing sex until you're ready is a good one but for most people, that won't be after they're married. Far better to teach young people how to negotiate sex so that it is pleasurable and safe rather than just telling them not to do it, which leaves them utterly unprepared when it does happen.

Not surprisingly, there is no mention of love between people of the same sex in the leaflet.

But what happens if we ignore you, oh wise ones?

'Where a sexual relationship is pursued to express passing feelings and emotions, it is ugly and destructive and will lead to misery and regret'. And of course you will get an STI.

This is starting to sound like a 70s teen slasher movie, the sort where a bunch of teenagers get together and anyone who dares to have sex gets killed by the possibly dead guy in the mask while the virgins survive. Maybe starring Jamie Lee Curtis.

Why do we need such sage words now?

'Young people today often expect to have a series of short-term relationships before they finally settle down with someone for life. Such casual relationships frequently prove to be a training ground for divorce rather than for happy and fulfilling marriages. But it hasn't always been like that, and it doesn't have to remain like that'.

Where is the evidence to back up these statements? It really isn't hard to look things up these days and get some statistics to back up your arguments. Except when they don't exist.

In what time and place were young people all chaste? In the Victorian era when the orphanages were bursting at the seams with illegitimate babies and an estimated 10% of the urban population had syphillis which, in one part of London, also killed 57% of infants? In Mediaeval times which needed legislation like the Special Bastardy Act of 1235? After the war when we were celebrating the survival of British Values? Compare the rates in 1945 with before and after here. Or maybe the FET is thinking about some other lost time and place, like Narnia.

Finally, there are some handy tips for finding true love. One of them is:

'It's a good test to ask yourself 'How does he treat his mum?' or 'How does she treat her dad?' It is quite likely that they will treat you the same way'.

This is deeply deeply creepy in many ways.

So hey kids - Don't do the ugly sex. Don't think about sex. Don't learn about sex. Sex is only ever to make babies after you get married. And don't enjoy it too much even then - which you probably won't if you've never learnt anything about it.

With any luck, the leaflets will get no further than the bins of schools around the country.

Choose Life

2010-10-28T12:33:00.014+01:00

A look at the latest round of anti-abortion campaigns

For some reason, Christian anti-abortion groups have chosen the 43rd anniversary of the Abortion Act to launch their latest campaign.

Christian Concern's Choose Life campaign includes adverts on London buses that feature a foetus, a vigil outside Parliament, a national Service of Lament led by former Bishop of Rochester Nazir-Ali and screening an American documentary about what they call the 'abortion industry', showing 'the devestating effects abortion has on women'. Presumably, the people who chose the slogan have never seen Trainspotting.

Christian Concern (CC) said that 'For too long abortion has been a taboo subject, a situation that only compounds the problems that abortion brings. It is time for society to face up to the hidden scale and consequences of abortion'.

It's ironic then, that Christian groups objected to a recent TV advert by Marie Stopes attempting to make the subject less taboo.

Catholic groups are supporting CC even though polls have shown that the majority of UK Catholics support a woman's right to abortion and contraception.

Not given to subtle tactics, CC likes big numbers: 'MPs and Lords who voted in the 1967 Act never imagined that within four decades seven million babies would have been aborted, or that the reasons for abortion would have been so relaxed over the years'. They like emotive language too. A tiny ball of cells is a long way off being a baby.

They have also commissioned a poll by ComRes.

The poll asks:
1. How many abortions do you estimate take place in Britain each year?

Only 3% of the 1000 respondents were roughly in the right area. It's not clear whether they were told how their responses would be used.

2. In fact, according to Government figures just over 200,000 abortions took place in Britain last year. Which if these statements best sums up your view on this statistic?
It is too high and ways should be found to reduce it
It is a reasonable number and no action needs to be taken to reduce it
Don't know
Two thirds (66%) of respondents thought it was too high.

They're right, it is too high. There is no supplementary question to find out whether people thought this for moral, religious or other reasons, which allows CC to interpret the results any way they like. Pro-choice supporters would say that the solution lies in education, contraception and unbiased open discussion. The Government is currently reviewing SRE (sex education); a government poll has found that 90% of parents are in favour of children being taught about contraception although 80% of teachers don't feel equipped to teach SRE well. So one way to reduce the abortion rate would seem to be to train teachers better to equip young women to avoid unwanted pregnancy.

Religious group Family and Youth Concern are objecting to the poll because it was backed by Durex, claiming that Durex has a vested interest. It's entirely possible that they do but FYC have interests of their own: 'young people do not need to be presented with a menu of sexual options from which they can make ‘informed choices’. Rather, the whole issue needs to be approached with honesty, modesty and within a clear moral framework that shows a proper respect for parents and for marriage.' Their interest is to promote sex only within marriage and only for 'childbearing'. Condoms reduce unwanted pregnancies, not abstinence and preaching.

Back to the poll. Education is not one of the options it offers. It continues (Warning - the dice are loaded):

3.Would you support or oppose each of these possible changes to the law on abortion?
A compulsory cooling off period between diagnosis of pregnancy and abortion, to ensure a mother is sure of her decision
78% of respondents supported this proposal.

A cooling off period would mean prolonging the suffering of many women and their partners, increasing health risks (if it's compulsory) and it also assumes that women have abortions on a whim. A cooling off period would also give pro-life advocates longer to work on the women. The use of the word 'mothers' is emotive and makes their intentions clear - a woman is a 'mother' from the moment of conception. However, around one in four pregnancies miscarry naturally, many in the first few weeks when the woman doesn't even know she is pregnant.

A woman's right, enshrined in law, to be informed of all the physical, psychological and emotional risks associated with abortion
89% of respondents supported this.

A legal duty on doctors to provide access to advice and information about alternatives to abortion, such as adoption.
82% supported this.

Of course women should be given all the options, presented in an even-handed, unbiased way, as well as being told about any consequences but only the real consequences, not the made-up, morally loaded, manipulative ones (I'll get to those in a moment).

4. Would you support or oppose each of these possible changes to the law on abortion?
A reduction in the number of weeks' pregnancy at which an abortion can be conducted, which currently is 24 weeks or just under six months, to a limit of 20 weeks or less.
61% agreed with the reduction.

This is what the questionnaire has been leading up to. CC want to reduce the number of abortions not by helping women (and their partners) to avoid becoming pregnant in the first place but by making it much harder for them to have an abortion when they do. The questionnaire does not inform the respondents how many abortions currently happen after 20 weeks so that they could make an informed choice about their response. In 2007, 89% of terminations happened before 13 weeks. In 2005, only 1.3% happened between 20 and 24 weeks. So CC's campaign to reduce the limit would have very little effect on the figures, which makes their poll little more than emotive propaganda.

Foetal viability was examined by the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology in 2007. Foetal viability means survival of foetuses who are alive at variable times during the pregnancy or the capability of surviving the neonatal period and growing up into an adult. The Committee concluded that:

'While survival rates at 24 weeks and over have improved they have not done so below that gestational point. Put another way, we have seen no good evidence to suggest that foetal viability has improved significantly since the abortion time limit was last set, and seen some good evidence to suggest that it has not.'

This conclusion is shared by the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

A spokesperson from Marie Stopes International told me: "Having an unplanned pregnancy is often a very difficult experience for a woman and her partner. At Marie Stopes International we provide couples with non-judgemental information about all their options to ensure women can make the right decision for them."

It's not like Marie Stopes and similar clinics are forcing abortions on women or that doctors are pushing them as the easy option. They are pro-choice, which means that any choice a woman makes is supported, not just the forced so-called choice that CC are promoting.

The spokesperson added: “Fortunately, in Britain, women have access to safe abortion care unlike in many developing countries where abortion remains illegal and complications from backyard abortions claim the lives of tens of thousands of women each year and leave more than two million women with lasting health problems.

“Encouragingly public support remains exceptionally high for the right to access safe abortion care with a recent YouGov survey finding that less than 9 per cent of people opposed the right to an abortion.

“We are working hard to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies by educating women about more reliable contraception methods such as the implant and IUD and provide them with access to contraception.”

With less than 9% opposing abortion, Christian Concern are not representing the moral majority or protecting millions of morally feeble women from themselves. They are yet another vocal religious minority group.

It's not just Christian Concern who are ramping up their campaigning. American-style protests are also becoming more common in the UK. A Texas-based group called 40 Days For Life has been holding protests outside Marie Stopes clinics in London. The campaigners are planning to hold 40 days of protest in the US, Australia, Denmark, Canada and Northern Ireland as well as the UK.

Some of the leaflets they are handing out to women outside the clinics warn about an increased risk of breast cancer following abortion. This is an old favourite of pro-lifers. As I wrote in July last year for example, the Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) have long spread this lie.

There has also been increased activity in Europe by pro-life lobbyists, for example in scuppering the McCafferty report recommending that doctors' conscientious objection to abortion (among other things) should not be upheld at the price of women's health and well-being.

Tory MP Therese Coffey has tabled an early day motion that would force women who want an abortion on mental health grounds to get counselling and be warned of risks to their mental health. The psychological toll of abortion is another favourite of the pro-life campaigners. The CMF are also keen on the fact that abortion makes you mentally ill - even though the 'evidence' they cite says the complete opposite of what they claim.

CC and others like this two-pronged attack: abortion kills babies and threatens women's sanity and health. They're not much bothered about the effect of unwanted children on women's health.

In Northern Ireland, pro-choice campaigners at the first all-Ireland conference on abortion and clinical practice have called for the laws to be modernised. NI is the only part of the UK where abortion is still illegal. Protesters were of course out in force, led by a group called Precious Life.

One consequence of abortion being illegal in the Republic is that abortifacients are increasingly being illegally imported, despite the health risks of self-administering.

UPDATE: A Vatican official has said that voting for a pro-choice political candidate can never be morally justified.

Religious pressure is not going to stop women having abortions. Yes, there are too many at the moment. Abortion should be safe, legal and rare. The solution will be found in education, not indoctrination.

One bit of good news is that Education For Choice has launched the A Word Campaign to help educate young people so they can make an informed choice about abortion and contraception. They say: 'EFC believes that young people should not be lied to. School should be a place where they can learn to recognise the difference between values and evidence and to avoid conflating opinion and fact, sermons and science.'

Finally, in America, one couple going to an abortion clinic fought back against protesters and filmed the encounter.

HRT Cancer Scare - here we go again

2010-10-20T15:58:00.020+01:00

Scare stories about HRT come round every few years. This time, according to the Daily Mail, HRT can now treble the chance of dying of breast cancer. Other shock headlines include 'Study shows HRT even riskier than thought'. The Washington Post goes with 'Hormones also raise death risk of cancer' and talks about 'powerful evidence'.

Menopause is still a taboo subject that a lot of women don't feel comfortable talking about, which makes it easier for myths and misunderstandings to spread.

If you read through to the end of some of the articles they do mention the stats but the headlines are what will stick in people's minds and may be the only part of the story they see - they are what's known as the take-away. A lot of people aren't that good at interpreting stats even if they get that far.

The headlines are based on research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). A study of 12,788 women for 11 years looked at women taking a combination of oestrogen and progesterone in a randomized placebo controlled trial.

Rowan Chlebowski of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center who led the analysis commented in the Washington Post that 'the risk in the study was low and barely met the threshold for being considered statistically significant' but he was 'confident that the risk was real'.

Barely Statistically Significant Cancer Risk! is not a headline you're likely to see. Even if such a headline existed, it's the C word that readers would remember. For cancer, there is no such thing as bad publicity.

The figures are these: in the placebo group there were 0.01% deaths and in the HRT group there were 0.03% deaths a year. That's 12 and 25 women in 12,000. The research also found that combination HRT was associated with more invasive breast cancers (0.42% of cases per year in the group as opposed to 0.34% in the placebo group).

With any apparently alarming statistics, it's the explanation of absolute and relative risk that rarely gets a look-in. If a disease kills two people in ten thousand one year and four people the next then the mortality rate has increased 100%. The chance of dying is still only four in ten thousand but that doesn't make for a good headline.

During the 2008 HRT breast cancer scare, also based on research by Rowan Chlebowski, Behind The Headlines pointed out something news stories glossed over: "In addition, the authors of the study point out that the differences seen should be interpreted with caution, as they may have resulted from differences in health seeking behaviours in the two groups of women after the trial. Women who had been told that they had been taking combined HRT at the end of the trial and knew of the cancer risk may have been more likely to seek medical attention for any suspicious symptoms than women who knew they had only received placebo.

BTH also pointed out that, despite predictable scare headlines: 'the study was not directly investigating any link between breast cancer and HRT. Instead it looked at whether HRT increased the chances of detecting an abnormality on a mammogram that then required a biopsy for further investigation; this would not necessarily involve a diagnosis of breast cancer.

'The main finding of the study was that the diagnostic accuracy of mammography was decreased in women who had taken combination HRT.

'This study only investigated one type and one dosage of combination HRT'.

There are many different types and levels of dosage. For example, the combination of estradiol and dydrogesterone (oestrogen/progesterone) sold as Femoston in the UK increases the risk for women in their 50s of having a stroke from 3 in 1000 to 4 in 1000. The risk of blood clots goes up from 3 in 1000 to 7 in 1000. And the risk of breast cancer goes up from 32 in 1000 by the age of 65 to 38 in 1000 if they take it for 5 years.

The risks of HRT are real in the sense that they do exist and the latest research seems to indicate that they are higher than previously believed. Risks also have to be offset against benefits - any good GP will explain this. Some of the risks can be considerably lessened by lifestyle changes and regular check-ups. There is a good basic introduction to HRT here.

Here's another risk: in 2004, the lifetime risk of dying in a motor vehicle accident was 1 in 82 in the US and 1 in 240 in the UK. Killer Cars!

Always let your conscience be your guide? Part 2

2010-10-10T16:29:00.003+01:00

On October 7 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe debated 'Women's access to lawful medical care'. The main concern was doctors' conscientious objection affecting women's access to abortion and family planning (including contraception and fertility treatment).

While recognising the right of individuals to follow their (usually religious) conscience, the debate and planned resolution happened because of a growing concern about the increasing and largely unregulated practice of refusing abortions. The intention was to get members states to introduce clear and comprehensive regulations. It did not go to plan.

In the majority of member states, there is little or no effective regulation in this area. The draft resolution proposed that only individuals should be allowed to opt out, not public or state institutions - hospitals and clinics. It also proposed that objecting doctors must give women full and unbiased information about all the options and refer them to a practitioner who would give them the procedure with the absolute minimum of delay. In emergencies or where there was no other doctor/clinic to refer women to, then the doctors should set aside their beliefs, put the patient's welfare first and carry out the procedure.

Under international human rights law, member states have a duty to ensure that healthcare providers' exercise of conscientious objection does not harm the health and rights of their patients.

Before the debate, Rapporteur Christine McCafferty prepared a report on the current situation in Europe. The report called for all medical personnel to state in advance any objections and a register of objectors to be established (as is currently the case in Norway).

Then the pro-life religious lobby weighed in. The resolution as adopted was so watered down that the religious lobby hailed it as a victory. The provisional Resolution 1763, re-titled 'The right to conscientious objection in lawful medical care' now begins: No person, hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to an abortion, the performance of a human miscarriage, or euthanasia or any act which could cause the death of a human foetus or embryo, for any reason.

It effectively gives primacy to conscience.

However, it was not quite the whitewash they are claiming as the vote was won by 56 votes to 51.

Sophia Kuby, a pro-life advocate and head of the group European Dignity Watch that lobbied hard against the McCafferty Report, said the vote “is a victory for common sense and for freedom” and “a great victory for Europe. Europe has made clear tonight that freedom of conscience constitutes a pillar of a democratic society that needs to be defended, at times also against a radical minority that wishes to limit freedom and impose a unique pro-abortion thinking in Europe. It is a great sign of hope that a majority has clearly voted against a radical pro-abortion, anti-freedom, anti-diversity lobby that tries to establish unhealthy and suffocating legislation.”

Not freedom for women but freedom for believers. Diversity is hardly well served if only certain people or organisations benefit. And it's ironic that the word 'healthy' was used when it's women's reproductive health under threat. It's not clear in what way lobbying to protect women's legal right to abortion is 'unique'. The McCafferty report did not for one minute suggest that doctors could not object, just that the situation should be regulated to protect both conscience and health needs. There was no promotion of abortion.

Gregor Puppinck, the director of the European Centre for Law and Justice (a Christian organisation), commented: "The Council of Europe reaffirms the fundamental value of human conscience, and of liberty in the face of attempts at ideological manipulation of science and of medicine. Independence of science and of medicine is also an essential value at the heart of democracies."

It's not clear how routinely putting religious conscience before women's rights makes science and medicine independent. Puppinck fails to see that he is trying to manipulate medicine to suit his own ideology. He also cites the Nuremberg trials, implicitly comparing pro-choice groups with Nazis.

Putting a doctor's beliefs always and inevitably before a patient's needs creates a hierarchy of values and rights.

The women most likely to be affected are those in remote or rural areas where it's hard to get to another doctor or hospital, often because there is no public or cheap transport, women on low incomes who cannot afford to travel long distances or go private, young women still living at home who may not want their parents to know and other vulnerable groups like women with learning difficulties. Unwanted teenage pregnancies can ruin young women's education prospects and cause social stigma both for her and the child.

Other risks include raised maternal mortality rates, the increase of unsafe and illegal abortions and an increase in HIV/AIDS and other STIs where practitioners refuse to supply information about contraception or condoms. It's not just women who suffer; their partners and children also suffer if the woman's health is affected, a family that cannot afford a child (or another child) will be pushed further into hardship and couples can be denied fertility treatments. It's not clear how some - if not all - doctors would explain their conscientious objections to patients without expressing personal judgement. Not every patient in a vulnerable condition would feel able to complain or stand up to such a response.

The European Centre for Law and Justice developed out of the American version, founded by evangelical Christians, but they are not the only religious influence at work. The Catholic Church is also, not surprisingly, involved.

I wrote about two of the more extreme versions of Catholic influence in May - in the US a nun was excommunicated for allowing a life-saving abortion in the hospital where she worked and last year there was the case of an abortion given to a nine year old Brazilian girl pregnant with twins after being raped, allegedly by her stepfather. The doctor, the medical team and the child's mother were excommunicated by Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of Recife who said that "A graver act than rape is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life". The child was not excommunicated because she was a minor.

British organisations also lobbied against the McCafferty Report. Anthony Ozimic from one of them, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said, in characteristic emotive style, “This evening witnessed an incredible victory for the right of staff in medical institutions to refuse to be complicit in the killing of unborn children and other unethical practices."

McCafferty's report includes examples of the current situation and of how conscience clauses are being abused. In Croatia, for example, it is reported that doctors refuse abortions but then offer them privately - and charge for them. In Italy, nearly 70% of gynaecologists refuse to perform abortions on moral grounds and 50% of anaesthetists refuse to assist even though abortion is legal. In Slovakia and Poland, conscience clauses are often abused by top management who have unwritten policies banning abortions or sterilisations throughout the hospital whatever the rest of the staff think. There is a detailed report on how Slovakia is falling in with Vatican policy here. Another tactic is delaying so that the pregnancy goes beyond the legal limit for abortion.

It's not just Catholic countries where religious conscience is imposed to the detriment of women. In the UK in 2003, a High Court judgement found a doctor negligent for failing to give proper advice to a woman about her raised risk of having a baby with Down's Syndrome because he was a devout Catholic. Also in the UK, religious groups lobbied against a TV advert for the private Marie Stopes clinics as I reported in May.

The doctrine that religious groups attempt to impose on reproductive rights is not even supported by the majority of believers in some countries. In the UK, for example, seven out of ten Catholics support abortion and nine in ten support contraception.

The resolution has to be ratified by the Committee of Ministers, who include William Hague, before it becomes formal policy. His email address is haguew@parliament.uk should you want to write to him urging him not to pass this resolution as it stands. Conscientious objection can also affect other areas such as end of life choices.

Part 1 was about conscience opt-out for pharmacists dispensing emergency contraception (morning after pill).

Master of all you survey

2010-10-06T14:28:00.014+01:00

Torture numbers and they'll confess to anything
Greg Easterbrook

Since Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, large-scale data collection by survey has been part of government in this country. Can surveys based on self-reported information ever be reliable, whether it's an 11th century peasant reporting how many ducks she has to a Norman or a 21st century woman giving personal information over the phone or online? Are such surveys inherently any more reliable and honest than the 'personality' quizzes in teenage magazines? Not least among the factors influencing responses are the way questions are framed and how the respondent thinks the information will be used.

A recent survey for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) based on interviews with 450,000 people for an Integrated Household Survey (IHS) has been reported as finding that 71% of people in the UK are Christian and 20% have no religion, 1.5% are gay or bi and nearly 80% perceive themselves to be in good health. (All IHS statistics are considered experimental until assessed by the UK Statistics Authority).

The IHS asked respondents 'What is your religion, even if you are not currently practising?' with the intention of discovering 'religious affiliation - that is identification with a religion irrespective of actual practice or belief'. Not surprisingly, this has been reported as 71% are Christian.

Another survey by the ONS in 2008 found that only 22% described themselves as Christian and 45% said they had no religion.

The 2011 census will include the question 'What is your religion?'. This question was asked in the 2001 census and before that only in 1851. There has been controversy about the result of the 2001 census where 71% of people self-reported as Christian. Many of these, it is believed, identify as culturally rather than religiously Christian. Most of them rarely go anywhere near a church. According to a survey done by the Church of England, only 5% go at Christmas and 2.8% at Easter - the most important Christian festival.

Less seriously, 0.8% of people put their religion as Jedi in 2001 which offically makes them a bigger group than Sikhs, Jews or Buddhists in the UK.

The ONS deputy director said that the religion question in the next census would be 'a fabulous insight into societal changes to see how people register their religion'. Registering it is of course not the same as actively practicing it. And is 'fabulous' the best word to use for such a serious project?

Both religious and non-religious groups use these surveys in their campaigns to demand or challenge legal, financial and educational privileges, and governments use the findings to decide on funding, among other things, so they are more important than being of passing cultural interest. The widely differing findings are hardly a solid basis for policy or anything other than reflecting how variable survey findings can be.

People can and do change their minds about what they believe (although probably not so many of them in such a short space of time) but sexuality is a little less mutable.

The gay/bisexual statistic in the survey has led to headlines like 'Only one in 100 Britons is gay despite long-held myth' in the Mail.

It's inevitable that some groups will use stats to serve their own agenda and affected people will challenge them, especially if they have fought hard for equality.

One response to these findings on Facebook was '‎2,185,072 gay men and lesbians are currently registered on Gaydar in the UK - equating to 6.7 per cent of the UK population'.

More officially, in 2005, HM Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry did a survey to help the Government analyse the financial implications of the Civil Partnerships Act (pensions, inheritance, tax benefits). They found that there were 3.6 m gay people in the UK – around 6% of the population. This figure was greeted by some gay rights activists as realistic.

If there are now only 1.5%, where have the other 4.5% gone since 2005? It should be noted that 3% of IHS respondents either said 'Don't know' or refused to answer. Again, the differences in survey results make basing any action on them a leap in the dark.

As to the 80% who 'perceived themselves to be in good health', what does this prove? Feeling well and being well are not the same thing at all for a start.

Even when stats are not used to tax the hell out of conquered Anglo Saxon peasants with very good reasons to be creative in their self-reporting, surveys are not like scientific tests. They are not reproducible in lab conditions, the methodology can be peer-reviewed but there can't be placebo questions, double blinding or a control group. At best, they can provide useful demographics, at worst they tell us nothing and can be used for propaganda. If you don't like the findings of the current survey, just hold on and there'll be another one along shortly.

Pain Relief, Placebo and Profit

2010-09-19T13:17:00.007+01:00

Glucosamine and chondroitin have no effect on osteoarthritis of the hip and knee. Researchers at Bern University in Switzerland ran a meta-analysis of ten trials on the two treatments and found that they perform no better than placebo - as reported in the BMJ.

The analysis confirmed what the BMJ reported nearly ten years ago. It concluded that: Our findings indicate that glucosamine, chondroitin, and their combination do not result in a relevant reduction of joint pain nor affect joint space narrowing compared with placebo. Some patients, however, are convinced that these preparations are beneficial, which might be because of the natural course of osteoarthritis, regression to the mean, or the placebo effect. We are confident that neither of the preparations is dangerous. Therefore, we see no harm in having patients continue these preparations as long as they perceive a benefit and cover the costs of treatment themselves. Coverage of costs by health authorities or health insurers for these preparations and novel prescriptions to patients who have not received other treatments should be discouraged.

The global glucosamine market was worth £1.3bn in 2008.

The findings have been reported by the Telegraph, Independent, Mail and BBC among others. It is unlikely that now the truth is out, sales will fall. Evidence that something doesn't work has made no impact on other products. Reports like the ones here and here that antioxidants don't work have not stopped countless products being sold that proudly proclaim they contain them. Marketing rarely lets the facts get in the way of making money.

Boots sells Ladycare Magnets that allegedly treat the symptoms of menopause through magnotherapy even though there is absolutely no evidence they work and plenty that they can't possibly.

A Boots spokesman notoriously said that Boots doesn’t sell homeopathic remedies because they work, they sell them because people like to buy them: "I have no evidence to suggest that [homeopathic remedies] are efficacious. It's about consumer choice and a large number of our customers think they work."

There are plenty of other products that don't or can't work - the beauty industry is full of them, for example.

There are two issues here. One is freedom of choice. The research recommends that the NHS does not spend money on glucosamine and chondroitin but if people want to buy a product, that's up to them. However, if they think they are buying one thing (a medically-proven treatment) and they're getting another (a placebo) then arguably they are being mis-sold. It could also be argued that it's up to all of us to inform ourselves about what we're buying. But checking out the fat content on the back of a pizza in the supermarket is not the same as reading small print on apparently medical products, checking out academic research or even, in some cases, understanding media reports of research. Most people don't have the time, the will or the ability to do it. They're much more likely to buy on the recommendation of someone they know and trust (it worked for me). What's more, there may well not be any small print to check out.

The second issue is the ethics of placebo, which has been much discussed. Does it matter if feeling better is not the same as being better? Pain is one of the conditions that placebos work on particularly well and osteoarthritis can be very painful. Medical treatments for long-term pain can have side-effects while glucosamine and chondroitin apparently don't. How many of us actually know how any of the prescription medicines we get from the doctor work? If I had a long-term condition that medicine couldn't cure but which could be managed, then I think I'd rather get my placebo from a doctor who has fully diagnosed my condition, assessed all available treatments and will continue to monitor my progress than be left to the mercies of advertising and anecdote.

This leaves patients in a dilemma. If they do research their condition and possible treatments and find out that the only treatments that may help are placebos, will they still work? In order to save the NHS money, would it be ethical for doctors to recommend patients buy specific over-the-counter treatments rather than giving prescriptions? This way, patients get medical care but the NHS doesn't foot the bill for placebos. But then there is the question of what happens to people on low incomes. One potentially discriminatory effect of the Bern researchers' proposal is that the benefits of placebo will be available only to people who can afford them. This is the status quo as GPs are currently being advised not to prescribe glucosamine, but if over-the-counter is the only way people can buy placebos, is this equitable?

The placebo debate is not going to be resolved any time soon but the fact that yet more products have been proven to have no real effect means that it's not a debate that can be ignored. In the meantime, the manufacturers continue to make billions. One aspect that can be dealt with more simply is regulating labelling; claims like 'Promotes Natural Cartilage Regeneration' should be removed as this is demonstrably not true unless they are using a meaning of 'promotes' unknown to any other English speaker.

One for all or all for one?

2010-09-07T21:47:00.009+01:00

Do we relate more easily to individual people in need than to groups?

Jonah Lehrer suggests that we find it much easier to relate to individuals in need than to groups of people because of the 'identifiable victim effect'. He cites the Chilean miners as an example - a group of people who fail to interest most of us as much as a single famine victim.

Lehrer also mentions a paper which 'tested recent claims that analytical processing might undermine support for identified victims by suppressing emotional responses'. It found that ' Less-analytic processors donated more to a single identified victim than to requests describing statistical victims or a combination of both; more-analytic processors showed no differences.'

In other words, less analytical people are more likely to give to an individual or to a campaign using images of a single person.

While this may be true for some people in some instances, charitable giving appears to be much more complex - and more interesting - than this. It's true that charities know the value of showing a cute animal or big-eyed starving child with flies crawling on it (because animals are individuals too in this instance). But charitable responses to major disasters like the tsunami or the current situation in Pakistan appear to contradict the identifiable victim response. For example, the British people have given considerable and unexpected amounts to relief in Pakistan - does this make us more analytical than other nations? It could be said that people who give to large groups far away have a stronger emotional response or more empathy as it extends to more than one individual.

The type of victim is relevant too. For example, a homeless person on the street is an individual, sometimes familiar and living in the potential giver's neighbourhood. But for many passers-by, when they are begged at there's a judgmental/analytical process which happens. Is the beggar just going to spend the money on alcohol? Does s/he deserve our hard-earned money? Is s/he a helpless victim who had no part in their own downfall? Women begging on the street with babies are clearly trying to create an emotional response but some people may not respond to this, even wondering if it is really that woman's child, perhaps recalling some media story about begging rings and scams. Any individual doesn't do it for us, it must be the right individual.

The concept of the deserving poor comes into play and perhaps over-rides the individuality of the beggar and prevents identification; it's an idea that's been around since the 16th century. This is where sad puppies and starving children score - they are clearly innocent victims. But at some level, there is always an analytical process going on before we connect emotionally and decide whether we are being played and whether to act on generous feelings.

There's also media coverage. The Chilean miners are currently being ousted from the headlines by cricket scandals and footballers' private lives. What's more, the miners are alive and apparently in no immediate danger. There's no daily drama or death toll to tug our heart strings.

Time is a factor, too. A long-drawn out situation that appears insoluble is less attractive than a sudden, unforeseen natural disaster with shock value or something that appears to need a quick(ish) fix where it's easier to feel a difference is being made.

In addition, Lehrer says that we don't identify with statistics but I think that numbers do have an effect sometimes. Perhaps part of the problem is that the miners are neither one small child trapped down a well nor are there millions of them in imminent danger. There are too many of them and not enough.

It's true that millions of children around the world are daily at risk from preventable disease and hunger and yet people give money to the local donkey sanctuary because they saw a picture of a poorly donkey in the local paper but this is as much about marketing as generosity and empathy. Some research by Richard Wiseman found that the colour of a charity donation box and the wording on it affect how likely people are to give, for example. Using the word 'disaster' is good marketing, too.

There's possibly also a peer pressure effect. If everyone in your office is putting money into a collection tin, then resisting is going to be harder than if the tin is just in a shop or you get a mail shot at home. Telethons tap into something similar - look how much money everyone is giving, don't you want to be part of this virtuous group too? In such situations, what the collection is for becomes secondary, whether it's to sponsor a single child or for a major disaster.

For some people, charity is a religous duty, neither an emotional/empathic nor an analytical response.

There is a fair bit of research showing that women are more charitable than men, so gender is another factor (so are older people and Northerners in the UK).

One research paper looks at the gender difference in more detail. It calls the ability to identify or empathize with others 'the inclusion of others in the self'. It also looks at moral identity - the importance of being fair, kind, just, generous etc to self-identity. What it found was that men with stronger moral identity were more likely to give to individuals or to an in-group (local charities, for example) whereas women were more likely to give to an out-group (eg overseas charities) as their moral indentity increased. In other words, these women are responding to large groups more than men. Does this mean men are less analytical?

So it looks like charitable giving and relating to people in need isn't just about individuals versus groups but is much more complex - which is hardly surprising given that human instincts and motives for doing anything are complex. And just to confuse matters further, one of the biggest charities in the UK in terms of giving is the National Trust, which doesn't help humans at all.

Middle Age Spread

2010-08-25T15:06:00.017+01:00

Once again, there are stories in the press about the rise of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) in young people (under 24), with half a million new cases in the UK in the last year, a rise of 3% from the 2008 figures. There's an excellent analysis of the data and the media response by Dr Petra Boynton who also deals adeptly with an ill-informed response to the data by a Tory MP.

Although the problem is much more serious with the under 24s, they are not the only group at risk from not using condoms and from poor sex education. As Dr Boynton points out in her blog: 'Sexual health messaging - particularly through education and public health campaigns often overemphasises morality discourses of 'risk' or 'responsibility'... Such an approach also assumes older adults act in different (and more 'appropriate) ways than younger people, which is neither fair nor true'.

The Family Planning Association (FPA) has collected data showing that STIs are also on the increase in the 45-64 age group.

Statistics vary according to different sources. The Royal College of Nursing has noted a 93% increase in gonorrhea between 1999 and 2008 in this age group. A survey done in the West Midlands found that the most commonly diagnosed infection among the over 45s was genital warts – accounting for almost half (45 per cent) of the diagnoses – while herpes was the next most common (19 per cent). Cases of chlamydia, herpes, warts, gonorrhoea and syphilis all rose sharply between 1996 and 2003.

To go back to the actual numbers rather than percentages, according to the HPA's data, Table 4e(ii) shows that chlamydia increased from 1091 cases in 2002 to 2638 cases in 2008. Their data also shows an increase in herpes cases from 1613 to 2903 in the same age group over the same period. These are huge increases in percentage terms but still a small incidence in the population as a whole. So if you see shock headlines about huge increases in grannies with STIs, check the baseline figures.

However, whichever stats you look at, there is an undeniable increase.

One cause is heterosexual couples of that generation splitting up and starting to have casual sex again. For some of them, the thought of dating again is daunting enough, let alone the idea of buying and using condoms. Some people may never have used them. Women who have been through the menopause are mostly of a generation whose main concern was avoiding pregnancy; being on the Pill was considered enough protection and greatly superior to using condoms. The Pill was also seen as empowering women as they didn't have to rely on the man to provide contraception. In addition, the powerful HIV/AIDS adverts of the 80s are now a distant memory and may have come from a time when they thought the campaign didn't relate to them in their steady relationships (which they assumed/hoped were faithful).

A poll by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain found that almost 20% of the 45-54 age group admitted to having unprotected sex in the last five years with someone other than a long-term partner. And a Saga survey of around 8000 people found one in ten not using condoms even though they don't know the sexual history of their partner. Again, a sharp rise from a small number to a slightly larger number is a trend but not a crisis although it is a trend that needs addressing.

While some middle aged people had excellent sex education from schools or parents, many didn't. STIs were often seen as something only the promiscuous got. They may not know, for example, how STIs can be transmitted through non-penetrative sex or that they are at risk at all. And while some people may have plenty of experience, both in having sex and talking about it, not everyone does.

Part of the problem is that sex is often portrayed by the media as something for younger people; the thought of older people having sex or expressing any kind of sexuality can be a bit of a joke or cause (younger) people to wrinkle their noses.

There is a gender bias too, just as there is with younger people where boys are portrayed as predators and girls as victims or 'morally loose'. Older men who are still active are admired (see how many Hollywood stars are still getting the girl in movies well into their sixties) while active older women are a bit distasteful. The alleged Cougar phenomenon in the media is really about women in their forties - maybe early fifties - who look much younger, not grannies. The most explicit portrayal you're likely to see on TV is an advert for a denture product with an older couple kissing (no tongues). None of this helps some older people feel confident in talking about sex openly or seeking advice.

It's encouraging to anyone approaching this age group that the fun doesn't have to stop. But while some are happily embracing their new sexual activity, some older people who grew up in a time when sex was less openly discussed may also find it harder to talk to GPs and health professionals about sex-related matters, especially if they are much younger. They may not even want to admit they are having sex again.

The current government coalition is doing little in the way of public health campaigning for sexual health services for any age group but the Family Planning Association is trying to address the problem for older people with a Sexual Health Week from 13-19 September specifically aimed at people over 50.

So far there has been no media hype or hysteria about older sex as there has been once again with young people, laden with high-handed moral judgements and shock horror headlines. This may change once the campaign launches.

The facts are that there is a small but significant upward trend that is indicative of poor education and campaigning. Just as teenagers need to be equipped to have responsible sex in a factual, non-moralising way, so do older people. The week in September is a good start but without a sustained campaign, it could just come and go without making much of an impact. So, there is not a huge new phenomenon, the very fabric of our society is not at risk from feckless pensioners and irresponsible baby boomers but the government is failing both young and old

Food Allergies - Fact, Fiction and Fad

2010-08-11T18:28:00.009+01:00

There are two common responses when the subject of food allergies comes up. The first, mostly but not entirely from older people, is "Stuff and nonsense. They didn't exist when I was young, we ate whatever was put in front of us. You don't see starving people in the third world with allergies". The second is: "I feel much better and have lost lots of weight since I stopped eating wheat. I know I'm allergic/intolerant because I sent my poo/blood/hair away to be analyzed".

According to one source, 25% of adults think they have a food allergy although studies show that only about 2% really do. Which means that at least nine out of ten are making a big fat fuss about nothing. Recent news said that up to 8% of children now have allergies although a spokesperson from Allergy UK said: "Parents often look for alternative ways to diagnose their children, using tests which aren't scientific at all. Parents tend to think it's an allergy without taking proper medical advice".

It's mostly middle class people with a bit of spare cash who have latched onto food allergies and intolerances (the two are often used interchangeably). Not the life-threatening A&E kind of allergy but the feeling a bit bloaty and tired, self-dramatizing kind which are not allergies at all. Some people will happily say they're 'a bit allergic' to something without any medical evidence whereas they would never say 'I'm a bit diabetic' and not bother going to the doctor. One reason people might well feel better and lose weight by giving up wheat is that by not eating bread, pasta, pastry and pizza they are also cutting back on the high fat, high salt ingredients that go with them - cheese, highly salted meats, mayo, creamy sauces and so on. Or maybe they really are lactose intolerant and have accidentally cut most dairy out of their diet by giving up these foods. That's the trouble with self-diagnosis.

Saying 'I'm allergic to dairy' or 'I'm gluten intolerant' has become a bit of a middle-class mantra, not that different from telling people your star sign in some circles, as if that makes you more interesting and special. People are more than happy to discuss the details of their alleged intolerances in company where they wouldn't dream of mentioning an ingrown toenail or dandruff - two equally unpleasant but minor complaints. I've heard lengthy conversations about how cutting something out of a diet has changed someone's life, usually followed by a discussion of how they found out they had an allergy/intolerance. Inevitably, this does not involve a visit to the doctor. It involves posting some bodily fluid or excresence off for analysis. There are often endless conversations sharing the love and comparing notes on what foods they can't eat and how they got 'diagnosed'. While eating dinner. Of course, the host/ess has been thoughtfully supplied in advance with a list of all the things the guests can't eat.

A food allergy is an adverse immune response to a food protein. The body identifies a protein as something threatening, the immune system thinks it's under attack and triggers an allergic reaction which can range from mildly unpleasant to life-threatening.

In answer to the people who think that allergies are a modern fad - they're not. In the olden days, anyone with a serious allergy wouldn't make it through childhood and in days before the NHS and proper testing, the cause of death mostly went undiagnosed. The same still goes for parts of the third world. These people are often heard saying things like a certain food doesn't agree with them or 'I like it but it doesn't like me' without thinking that this could be a mild allergy. But going on and on about them is a modern fad, part of a more general obsession with food in our over-stocked culture. It's what used to be called being a fussy eater, perhaps followed by a smack on the bottie that quickly put paid to that bit of wilfulness.

An intolerance doesn't involve an immune reaction. It happens when the body is unable to deal with a certain type of food, usually because it doesn't produce enough of the chemical or enzyme needed to digest it. For example, a shortage of the enzyme lactase causes problems breaking down milk sugar (lactose) into simpler forms that can be absorbed into the bloodstream. There's a strong genetic pattern to food intolerances. Lactose intolerance is less common among northern and western Europeans (10 to 15 per cent are affected) than in Asian, African, native American and Mediterranean populations (70 to 90 per cent are affected). Symptoms include nausea, bloating, abdominal pain and diarrhoea, hours or days after. Which are pretty unpleasant. But those nasty squitty, pukey symptoms don't tend to get mentioned in dinner party conversations, which are more likely to involve weight loss and the person's skin improving. If you have regular cramping and throwing up, you'd probably hightail it to the doctor.

There are plenty of ways to get diagnosed. One involves getting medical advice. The rest don't. Some of these are pretty expensive, often hundreds of pounds. NICE has issued draft guidelines for doctors on diagnosis and treatment of allergies, which contain the advice 'Do not use the following alternative diagnostic tests in the diagnosis of food allergy: vega testing, applied kinesiology, hair analysis'. The guidelines also say that 'it was reported that many people with allergies practice self-care, using alternative sources of support rather than NHS services (for example, complementary services with non-validated tests and treatments)'.

Briefly, kinesiology uses 'energy* fields' in the body to diagnose allergy and intolerance, vega testing involves measuring electromagnetic conductivity in the body using a Wheatstone bridge galvanometer - the same device Scientologists use outside their centres to 'test' passers-by. Hair analysis tests for heavy metals that allegedly cause allergies or involves dowsing - swinging a pendulum over the hair; an allergy is diagnosed if an altered swing is noticed. And then there are the poo samples. Post your poo off to a lab in the UK or US and find out how many different foods you're allergic or intolerant to. As one UK hospital states, samples more than 8 hours old will not be processed as they have degraded too much, so sending poo through the UK postal service to another city, let alone to the States, is hardly going to ensure it arrives in prime condition. And I really don't want to think about what collecting your own poo sample involves. Or what postal workers might make of poorly wrapped packages.

There are some excellent analyses of why all these alternative testing methods are nonsense on stilts on Quackwatch and Holford Watch.

If you really are allergic or seriously intolerant, it can be very unpleasant indeed. If you think you might be or that your child is, see a doctor. Otherwise, kindly shut the fuck up. Or am I being intolerant?

* As soon as you hear 'energy fields', you know you're in quackland.

PSHE update

2010-07-30T18:30:00.003+01:00

As the DSCF no longer exists, the Department of Health asked NICE to run a consultation on sex and relationships education. It's pretty much a re-run of the earlier consultation. I wrote this for work.

There is a lot more to say on the subject of PSHE and Dr Petra Boynton has covered all the main issues in her blog.

Female Genital Mutilation in Britain

2010-07-25T09:47:00.006+01:00

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is sometimes referred to as female circumcision although it is far more severe than the male version and should always be referred to as what it is - mutilation.

FGM has no health benefits. It involves removing and damaging healthy and normal female genital tissue, and interferes with the natural functions of girls' and women's bodies. It's done to ensure that the girls' future husbands can guarantee their bride is a virgin and to ensure fidelity. The causes are a complex mix of religious, social and cultural factors. Girls who are not cut can face being outcast from their societies and unable to find a husband. In essence, it is a way of controlling women's bodies and sexuality. It's said to reduce their libido, to be a sign of femininity and that women who are unmutilated are 'unclean' amongst other lies.

According to Forward UK, an anti-FGM charity, it's estimated that approximately 100-140 million African women have undergone FGM worldwide and each year, a further 3 million girls are estimated to be at risk in Africa alone. FGM also happens in the Middle East and Asian countries, and increasingly in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada. Forward estimates that as many as 6,500 girls in the UK are at risk of FGM every year. The summer holidays are when many mutilations happen as they give the victims time to recover before going back to school in the autumn.

There are four types identified by the World Health Organisation, ranging from partial to total removal of the external female genitalia.

1. Clitoridectomy: partial or total removal of the clitoris and, in very rare cases, only the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris).

2. Excision: partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora.

3. Infibulation: narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the inner, or outer, labia, with or without removal of the clitoris.

4. Other: all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.

However, an article in the BMJ questions the usefulness of these classifications, saying that 'The WHO classification fails to relate the defined forms to the severity of the operation'. For example: 'WHO classifies all forms that involve suturing as type III, regardless of whether the labia minora or majora have been cut. Therefore classification as type III does not indicate the extent of the mutilation that has been done. This is important, especially in investigations of FGM and complications'. Another problem is that 'Almost all studies about the prevalence and trends of ... (FGM) have been based on women self reporting their form of FGM. How this reported form corresponds to reality is unknown'. It concludes that 'The WHO should revise its classifications to relate the different forms more to the anatomical extent of the operation.' Far more research needs to be done to get useful statistics and to get rid of the ignorance, secrecy and silence around this subject.

FGM is traditionally done by an older woman with no medical training. Anaesthetics and antiseptic treatment are not generally used and cutting is usually done with basic tools like knives, scissors, scalpels, pieces of glass and razor blades. Often iodine or a mixture of herbs are placed on the wound to tighten the vagina and stop the bleeding. There have been cases of UK doctors willing to carry out the procedure. When caught, they have been struck off.

The most common age is between four and ten, although it appears to be falling. Some of the girls are taken abroad, some are mutilated in the UK. In some cases, there are 'cutting parties' with groups of girls mutilated together to save money.

Immediate risks are death from blood loss and infection, urinary and menstrual problems. Longer-term effects include extensive damage of the external reproductive system, uterus, vaginal and pelvic infections, cysts and neuromas, increased risk of Vesico Vaginal Fistula, complications in pregnancy and child birth, psychological damage, sexual dysfunction, difficulties in menstruation. Period blood can build up and clot, leading to serious, life-threatening infection. There are currently 16 clinics in the UK to deal with the damage.

None of the major world religions demands mutilation. Some religious leaders condemn it while others either turn a blind eye or endorse it. FGM is not limited to Muslims as it is practised in Christian communities too. It is thought to pre-date both religions and to have started in Egypt; type 3 mutilation (according to WHO classification) is also known as pharaonic circumcision. There is nothing in the Koran requiring FGM but there are hadeeths about it. For example: 'Circumcision is a commendable act for men (Sunnah) and is an honorable thing for women (Makromah)' and 'Prophet Muhammad is reported to have passed by a woman performing circumcision on a young girl. He instructed the woman by saying: "Cut off only the foreskin (outer fold of skin over the clitoris; the prepuce) but do not cut off deeply (i.e. the clitoris itself), for this is brighter for the face (of the girl) and more favorable with the husband'. While many Islamic scholars and leaders question these hadeeths, for anyone who wants an excuse, they can provide it.

The UK Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985 makes it an offence to carry out FGM or to aid, abet or procure the service of another person. The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, makes it against the law for FGM to be performed anywhere in the world on UK permanent residents of any age and carries a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment. To date, no prosecutions have been made.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) requires 'all states to take all appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children' and Article 2 of the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women states that 'all violence against women shall be understood to include FGM and other traditional practices harmful to women'.

The UK police have set up Project Azure to combat the crime but have so far taken a soft approach. In 2007, the Met offered a £20,000 reward for information leading to arrest, with no success. Part of the problem is lack of research and the reliance on anecdotal evidence or statistics from doctors treating the after-effects because of the secrecy surrounding the procedure and successive governments' timidity in taking on 'cultural' issues. There have been debates about whether attempts to end the practice are Western cultural imperialism imposing its values on other cultures and whether cultural relativity means that the West has no right to comment on or condemn other people's traditions. Although there needs to be sensitivity in dealing with the subject, especially to avoid stigmatizing the women, this should not be an excuse for doing nothing. This is not some quaint 'ethnic' tradition, it's a non-consensual human rights violation

The West has its own history of fear and loathing of female genitals and sexuality. Freud stated in Sexuality and the Psychology of Love that the 'elimination of clitoral sexuality is a necessary precondition for the development of femininity', for example. In some extreme cases, clitorectomy was practised to prevent women masturbating or as a cure for hysteria and lesbianism.

More recently, women who have been made to feel there is something 'wrong' with their genitals are offered cosmetic surgery, to 'correct' large or assymetrical labia for example. According to one website, 'Many women dislike the large protuberant appearance of their labia. This may cause severe embarrassment with a sexual partner. Surgical labial reduction can greatly improve the aesthetic appearance of the abnormally enlarged labis.' One UK site says that 'It's not unusual for a woman to feel dissatisfied with her labia'.

Surgery is touted because it is a woman's 'right' to have beautiful genitalia - but also her duty if she wants to avoid shame and embarrassment. Although this in no way compares with the forced mutilation of girls and young women, it is an indicator that no society is immune from the pressure on women to conform to artificial norms of what are acceptable genitalia, creating yet another dissatisfaction with their bodies.

Noah's Ark Zoo wins an award

2010-07-24T16:48:00.006+01:00

Noah's Ark Zoo in Wraxall, North Somerset has won a Learning Outside the Classroom Quality badge for its schools programme.

This is surprising for two reasons.

Firstly, an investigation by the Captive Animals Protection Society (CAPS) and the BBC Programme Inside Out found that the zoo was breeding tigers for a controversial circus owner and that staff were under strict orders not to tell anyone.

One of the tigers died 10 days after giving birth to four cubs, one of which also died. The zoo claimed that she died from Feline Infectious Peritonitis but there was no proper post-mortem. The tiger's head, paws and skin were cut off and the body was buried in breach of animal disposal legislation.

A woman working undercover for CAPS found the head in a freezer. According to CAPS, the zoo's education officer, also a qualified vet, admitted to her that the burial was illegal, that she turned a blind eye and that no proper examination was done, even to check if the tiger had died of something infectious. The education officer told the undercover worker that the tiger's owner (the circus) wanted the head and paws.

As a result of the CAPS investigation, the zoo lost its membership of the trade body BIAZA - the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Nevertheless, North Somerset Council has recently approved plans for an elephant house.

Secondly, it's a creationist zoo. The website says:

'Undoubtedly, Darwin helped science to see that nature is continually changing, but along with this great progress there began a subsequent movement to remove any notion of God from our understanding of life. This is unjustified and we look to put the case for the Creator across to those who wish to investigate'

and

'Is it right for Darwin's evolutionary theory to be portrayed as "fact" in today's scientific media and the idea of God generally abandoned?'

and

'Important scientific theories have been proposed and much research done on the subject, but these, while widely accepted, have serious problems with them. After looking at the current explanations for origins and evolution; it is our view that the evidence available points to widespread evolution after an initial Creation by God'.

And much more.

According to the LOTC website, the award is judged on 'six high level generic quality indicators'. They are:

1. The provider has a process in place to assist users to plan the learning experience effectively;
2. The provider provides accurate information about its offer;
3. The provider provides activities or experiences which meet learner needs;
4. The provider reviews the experience and acts upon feedback;
5. The provider meets the needs of users; and
6. The provider has safety management processes in place to manage risk effectively.

As long as your learner needs don't include animal welfare, science or the meaning of the words 'fact', 'evidence' and 'theory', then you're fine. Are teachers keen for pupils to learn that God made everything or do they ignore that part as long as the kiddies can look at the nice animals?

The Bristol Animal Rights Collective has a petition against the zoo and holds regular protests outside. There's a big demo on August 30th.

Incidentally, according to Genesis 7:2-3, the animals didn't all go in two by two. The clean went in seven by seven and the unclean two by two. The seventh of each clean species was sacrificed once they reached dry land (v20). Which must have taken quite a long time.

UPDATE 18 August 2010
My comments to a Welsh newspaper on the zoo.

Vatican Causes Cancer?

2010-07-15T15:03:00.006+01:00

The Vatican has been accused of giving children cancer. Highly amusing as it is to think of a radioactive Pope spreading Vaticancer, he's too busy with all the child abuse cover-ups and conning the UK taxpayer into spending up to £100 million on his visit to waste energy emitting Papal Death Rays. He is getting on a bit, after all.

Professor Andrea Micheli has written a 300 page report focussing on 19 deaths from leukemia or lymphoma between 1980 and 2003 in the Cesano area north of Rome. Vatican Radio has 60 masts nearby in Santa Maria di Galeria. Micheli's investigation was ordered by a Roman court five years ago after concerns were raised about an increased incidence of cancer in the area. It's not clear exactly who was concerned.

He claims that children under 14 living within a 7.5km radius of the masts have a raised cancer risk. As a result of his research, six Vatican Radio officials are under investigation for manslaughter.

The charges mean that this is not just yet another lame conspiracy theorist attempt to link masts or electromagnetic waves and cancer or the usual Daily Mail cancer scare.

Quackwatch has very thoroughly shown why there is no conclusive link.

Moreover, the Italian Navy also operates masts in the area but Micheli insists that it's the Vatican masts that are to blame. Perhaps there is some added toxic ingredient being emitted because of what they are broadcasting. As Quackwatch says:'what they emit is not understood by the public. Nor can they be felt, tasted, seen or touched. This makes them mysterious, easily portrayable as threatening'. Temptation to draw a parallel with certain aspects of religion will be resisted.

There are other problems with Micheli's findings. Firstly, the research was submitted to a court, not for peer review. The contents were leaked.

A research paper that is available without leakage in the American Journal of Epidemiology called Adult and Childhood Leukemia near a high-powered radio station in Rome, Italy finds that rates were higher than expected but that 'The study has limitations because of the small number of cases and the lack of exposure data.' It adds that 'no causal implication can be drawn'.

And the Lancet finds that: 'In the European population, about 1% of all malignant neoplasms arise in patients younger than 20 years. This low frequency represents a major difficulty for studies of putative risk factors'.

An article in The Hematology Journal called Expected number of childhood cancers in Italy from 2001 to 2015 states: 'The total number of children with incident cancer in Italy has never been specifically estimated. Specialized population-based Childhood Cancer Registries have only been operating in Piedmont (CCRP) and in the Marche region, while general population cancer registries cover about 20% of the Italian population'.

This means that there is insufficient data to tell if cancer rates have gone up above the expected rate compared with other mast-free parts of Italy. It's hard to gauge what's higher than expected when there is no accurate definition of 'expected'.

Leukemia and lymphoma are the commonest childhood cancers. Italy has nearly the highest rate of them in the whole world.

In Europe, the overall incidence increased by 1% a year from 1970-99 in children and by 1.5% in adolescents. The average incidence in Europe is 140 per million for children up to 14. That's 1.4 children per ten thousand. According to the American Journal of Epidemiology research, nearly 50,000 people live in a 10km area around the station.

[edited 22/3/11: In the Perugia region, about 150km north of Rome, for example, around 1.3 children in ten thousand get leukemia or lymphoma every year.

Nineteen children got leukemia or lymphoma in a twenty three year period in the Cesano area. In the Perugia region in the same period, you would expect just under 30 children to get them.]

While the data from these various sources are not directly comparable, it looks very much like nineteen deaths is not a suspicious figure.

This is probably the one and only time I will ever defend the Vatican.

Hyperbolic Crochet

2010-07-08T19:28:00.016+01:00

In 1997 a mathematician at Cornell figured out how to make a model of hyperbolic space that her students could handle so they could understand the concept better. Dr Daina Taimina got the idea from William Thurston but his paper models were too fragile to be of practical use. Crochet to the rescue.

With hyperbolic space, as you move away from a point, the space around it expands exponentially. While all spheres have the same form, hyperbolic surfaces can differ substantially. This quality is characterized by the radius of the plane; the more crenellated the surface, the smaller its radius and the flatter the surface, the greater its radius. A regular Euclidean plane can be thought of as a hyperbolic plane of infinite radius.

To show you what this means in practice, here are my own attempts. This is what one looks like after just two rows of crochet:

And after four rows:

And six:

And eight (at which point, I ran out of yarn):

The width is 9cm and the edge measures over 2.5m. Dr Tamina's biggest one had a width of 4 inches, a perimeter length of 369 inches and weighed nearly a pound.

The photos are not great quality, but you get the idea. There are some better quality ones here. For mathematicians, an increase is made every Nth stitch so the number of stitches from one row to the next is in the constant ratio N to N+1. For crocheters, I used a 3.5mm needle, double acrylic yarn and started with a ring of 6 stitches then increased in every stitch, working in double (or, if you're American, single).

There are examples of hyperbolic geometry in nature, like lettuce, kelp, sea slugs, flatworms and nudibranches. Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute for Figuring have made a crocheted coral reef with kelps, anemones, sea slugs and corals by using variations and permutations of the basic algorithm. Crocheters all over the world have contributed and there are now many sub-reefs, like the Bleached Reef:

After which, my own little sea creature looks a bit lonely:

It's really really easy to do. Who says maths can't be fun?

Next time, the science of kittens and pink things.

Thanks to my crochet guru for this one.

Homeopathy and the NHS - update

2010-06-29T15:48:00.009+01:00

In May, the British Medical Association's annual conference of junior doctors declared that homeopathy is witchcraft and now the BMA’s conference in Brighton has voted overwhelmingly against commissioning or funding for homeopathic remedies or homeopathic hospitals in the health service. They also want training posts in homeopathic hospitals scrapped.

What’s more, pharmacists should remove homeopathic remedies from their shelves because this strongly suggests to the public they are medicines. Instead they should be put in a section marked ‘placebos’.

This may well be a step too far because, as we know, Boots doesn’t sell homeopathy because it works, they sell it because people like to buy it. In case you’ve forgotten - a spokesman for Boots said: "I have no evidence to suggest that [homeopathic remedies] are efficacious. It's about consumer choice and a large number of our customers think they work."

Dr Mary McCarthy, a GP at the conference, said: ‘We are not asking for homeopathy to be stopped and it will allow those who want to do it to continue to use it. What we are asking is that it’s not funded by the scarce NHS resources.’

OK, so it’s not witchcraft

BMA junior doctors’ committee vice-chair Tom Dolphin, who first proposed banning homeopathy at the BMA annual junior doctors conference in May, said: ‘I got into trouble for saying at the juniors conference that homeopathy is witchcraft.

'I take that back and apologise to the witches I apparently offended by association. Homeopathy isn’t witchcraft — it is nonsense on stilts. It is pernicious nonsense that feeds into a rising wave of irrationality that threatens the hard won gains of the enlightenment, and the scientific method.’

He warned that society risked ‘sinking back into a state of magical thinking, where made-up science passes for rational discourse, and wishing for something to be true counts as proof’.

Tell it like it is, Tom.

There were, of course, supporters of homeopathy at the conference and protesting outside.

Dr David Shipstone, a urologist, said it would be unfair to pick on homeopathy as there were plenty of other treatments which were used by doctors despite a lack of categorical evidence they worked. He said: "What is valid scientific evidence? Academics can argue about it all day."

It’s not about valid evidence in this case, but about the total lack of evidence even after 200 or so trials. Unless by ‘valid’ he means ‘imaginary’ – or possibly homeopathic evidence is so dilute that it contains no evidence at all.

BMA board of science chair-elect Averil Mansfield said: ‘What we want to be supporting and promoting is things that have scientific evidence. The resources are small in the NHS and that I think has to be our central priority.’

The Department of Health said it was looking into the issue:
"The department is considering issues to do with homeopathic remedies and hospitals as part of the government's response to the Science and Technology Committee's report on homeopathy. The response will be issued soon."

Homeopathy Is Witchcraft Part 2

2010-06-26T09:54:00.011+01:00

Tory MP David Treddinick is calling for an Early Day Motion (EDM). He has found a study that apparently shows homeopathy is beneficial in the treatment of breast cancer.

The Abstract of the Texan study begins: 'The use of ultra-diluted natural products in the management of disease and treatment of cancer has generated a lot of interest and controversy'.

In other words, here we go again.

This is the EDM (285): That this House welcomes the study published in the International Journal of Oncology, 2010 Feb; 36(2): 395-403 which revealed that homeopathic remedies have a beneficial effect on breast cancer cells; notes that researchers at the University of Texas conducted an in vitro study to determine whether products prescribed by a clinic in India have any effect on breast cancer cell lines; further notes that the researchers studied four ultra-diluted remedies, carcinosin, phytolacca, conium and thuja against two human breast adenocarcinoma cell lines, MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 and a cell line derived from immortalized normal human mammary epithelial cells, HMLE; observes that the remedies exerted preferential cytotoxic effects against the two breast cancer cell lines, causing cell cycle delay/arrest and apoptosis; believes that the findings demonstrate biological activity of these natural products when presented at ultra-diluted doses; and calls for further research in this important area. (my italics)

Treddinick also cites trials on the efficacy of homeopathy in the treatment of depression and primary insomnia.

In May this year, the British Medical Association's annual conference of junior doctors declared that homeopathy is witchcraft and public money should not be spent on it.

In February, a report by parliament's science and technology committee stated that: 'the NHS should cease funding homeopathy. It also concludes that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) should not allow homeopathic product labels to make medical claims without evidence of efficacy. As they are not medicines, homeopathic products should not longer be licensed by the MHRA'. Tredinnick disagrees.

(I covered both of these events in Homeopathy is Witchcraft Part 1.)

It's not the details of this particular study that interest me here. Other bloggers have already taken it apart and Simon Singh debated homeopathy with Tredinnick on Radio 4.

Tredinnick is using the now familiar mantra of "the jury is still out" and "we need more research". Yet again, this mythical jury hasn't reached a decision because homeopaths haven't got the result they want. After 200 plus trials, homeopathy has still not been proven to be better than placebo. That's like a criminal being found guilty 200 times and continuing to appeal.

There are two mutually incompatible approaches here. Scientists and their supporters are patiently quoting evidence and scientific methodology. Homeopaths and their supporters are using the tactics of a small child trying to wear its parents down. Tredinnick's debate will follow the well-worn path of scientists presenting the evidence and his side saying 'Yes, but...'.

No matter how many studies show that homeopathy doesn't work, its proponents will never give up. It's a fine example of cognitive dissonance. In other words, when they are presented with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, they put their fingers in their ears and go la la la la la.

Homeopathy is essentially a faith-based position. Like religion, scientists should perhaps deal with it by taking a secular position. If people want to pay for homeopathy and other alt med, despite all the evidence, that's really up to them. Like secularists try to do with religion, scientists and those of us who care about evidence should perhaps be trying to keep alt med out of public life. With religion, this means trying to stop it having power and influence in government, policy making, law, healthcare, education and so on. People can believe whatever they like but public money should not be spent on it. In alt med terms, it means making sure the NHS does not waste its limited resources on unproven remedies - making sure that public money is not wasted.

Like religion, belief in alt med is not going to go away no matter how hard we try. While it's important to demolish false claims and to educate the public, the most pressing current battle is for the NHS. Perhaps now it's time to focus our campaigning energy wholly onto the NHS as long as homeopathic effects are unproven.

Tredinnick said on Radio 4 that the UK is behind other countries, like France, who have embraced homeopathy. I'd rather think of it as us being ahead of the game but staying there is far from assured.

If you want to write to your MP about the EDM, you can find out how to contact them here.

Circumcision and sexual injuries

2010-06-17T10:43:00.012+01:00

A study called Circumcision and Reduced Risk of Self-Reported Penile Coital Injuries published in the Journal of Urology recently looks at whether circumcision reduces the incidence of injuries to the penis during sex, which may increase the risk of HIV infection. It found that the incidence of injury was less in circumcised than uncircumcised men.

Between 2002 and 2005, 2,784 men aged between 18 and 24 in Kisumu, Kenya were randomized into two groups, immediate circumcision and delayed circumcision after two years.

Injuries were classified as 1) penis feels sore during sex 2) penis gets cuts, scratches or abrasions during sex and 3) penis bleeds after sex. At the start of the two-year period, 64.4% of the men reported injuries and 10.5% reported all three. Having two or more sex partners in the last 30 days, applying substances to the penis before sex and having ulcers increased the risk of injury. Increased age was associated with increased risk, possibly because of 'a broader range of sexual practises'.

Any conclusion that circumcision in itself reduces injury risk is not substantiated by the research, however.

Both groups had intensive STI and HIV risk reduction counseling and were provided with unlimited free condoms. The prevalance of STIs decreased, condom use increased and reporting multiple sex partners decreased. After two years, it was found that circumcision, condom use, being married or living with a partner and cleaning the penis within one hour of sex reduced injury.

At the beginning, the 64.4% reporting injuries split into 65.1% of circumcised and 60% of uncircumcised men. After two years, 31% of circumcised men and 42.8% of uncircumcised still reported injuries.

A few points:

The incidence of injury was almost the same in circumcised and uncircumcised men at the start of the trial which would suggest that it was something else that happened during the trial that caused the reduction.

The groups were not divided into men having sex with men and with women. The assumption is that all of the men's partners were female.

Injuries and sexual practices were self-reported. The types of sexual practice were not recorded. There was no enquiry into why injuries were so high to begin with or how conselling may have influenced sexual practices - or the self-reporting of them - although the conclusion admits the need to verify the injuries and questions whether familiarity with study questions may have had an influence. Why the injuries were not verified during a trial based on counting them and why familiarity was not factored in at the start are not clear if they were going to undermine the findings. It is also not possible to separate out the effects of counselling and condoms.

50% of circumcised men reporting injuries at the start were still reporting injuries at the end of the trial which suggests that other factors are involved in injury reduction.

There's a bit of an anomaly in the table showing condom use. At the start of the trial, 1010 men hadn't used condoms at their last sexual encounter; by the end of the trial, this had fallen to 259. However, 765 had used a condom the last time they had sex but two years later, this number had fallen to 275 so overall, the number of men using condoms had fallen.

Another point the research raises is that 'the high frequency of coital injuries in uncircumcised men could place sex partners of HIV positive uncircumcised men at greater risk for HIV acquisition'. However, even if circumcision does protect men, there is no good evidence yet that it helps prevent transmission from HIV positive men to women. A trial in Uganda reported in The Lancet found that rates of transmission to women increased with circumcised men. The trial had to be abandoned for ethical reasons.

The research concludes that 'circumcision, condom use and penile hygiene provided protection against reported penile coital injuries. (...) The mechanisms by which circumcision confers protection against penile coital injuries remains unknown'.

It also states that 'recent circumcision did not increase penile coital injury risk' and this is about all that it can be said to have found. Condoms, reducing the number of partners, counselling and washing are all said to reduce injury but circumcision in itself has not been demonstrated to do so independently of these other factors. Too many variables.

Evidence against circumcision for HIV prevention and the risks involved here, here and here.

UPDATE: An interesting comment on this article from Lay Science:
The big drop in injuries for both groups after six months in the study is a sign of the Hawthorne Effect - just going in a study makes a difference. The difference between the two groups after that has been excluded is relatively small.

They don't seem to mention the commonest penile injury to intact men, torn frenulum ("banjo string"). This usually happens once in a lifetime, if at all. It is hardly surprising if having a sensitive moving part on one's penis might make it (slightly) more prone to injury. Circumcision as a way to reduce penile injuries is not indicated.

This is only the latest in a steady stream of papers originating from the same few researchers (Daniel Halperin, Robert Bailey, Ronald Gray, Stefan Bailis, Stephen Moses, Malcolm Potts, Thomas Quinn, Maria Wawer, Helen Weiss, Brian Morris, Jeffrey Klausner, Edgar Schoen and Thomas Wiswell - in this case, Bailey) claiming to show that circumcision is good for everything and harms nothing. I wouldn’t call it a “conspiracy”, but many of them have authored papers jointly, and their common interest seems to be in promoting circumcision, rather than any particular benefit.

Foetus Jesus

2010-06-09T11:42:00.012+01:00

With only 199 shopping days left before Christmas, the churches have already planned their festive ad campaign, a scan of baby Jesus in the womb, complete with halo.

It was created by advertising executives from ChurchAds.net, a consortium of churches including the Church of England, Methodist, Baptist and United Reform churches, but not the Catholics. Some of Britain's top award winning ad execs and designers work for them for free.

Frances Goodwin of ChurchAds said: 'This is the kind of thing proud parents-to-be show their friends and family. Our poster reflects this new way of announcing the news of a new arrival and places the birth of Christ in an ultra-contemporary setting. It offers a fresh perspective on the birth of Christ - creating anticipation and alluding to both his humanity and divinity'.

And to his serious spookiness. Without the message at the bottom, this could easily be a poster for a horror movie. Come to think of it, it still could be.

The poster will be widely displayed, including at bus stops, which might not win it much approval from the parents of small children if they have to explain what it is and how a baby gets into the womb. They might also have to explain to more scientifically-minded children how a halo could show up in a scan where ultrasound bounces off solid objects. Smart kids may not be satisfied with the answer 'it's a miracle' and may wonder how Holy Mary feels about having a large hula hoop in her womb.

A more serious consequence of the campaign is that anti-abortion groups are seeing it as a great opportunity to spread their message. The director of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child said: "This advertisement sends a powerful message to everyone in Britain where 570 babies are killed every day in the womb, 365 days a year, under the Abortion Act. Whenever we kill an unborn child in an abortion, we are killing Jesus".

Killing Jesus - that's not at all emotive. And not that effective for non-believers and followers of other religions. SPUC can't even get their facts straight. The latest official figures from the Deparment of Health are 518 abortions a day. This may not make a huge difference but is symptomatic of their rather casual relationship with facts.

Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society commented: "I hope that the Church of England isn't trying to use its Christmas poster campaign to make a political point. If that's the intention, we may have questions to ask at the Charity Commission".

Even if the churches are not deliberately using the posters to comment on abortion, they really should be aware of how groups like SPUC will hijack their campaign. After the first ever ad for an abortion advisory service on TV recently, pro-lifers will be looking for any way to hit back.

The posters won't go up until December 6th but will be available to buy online. A previous Christmas poster showed the Holy Family at a bus stop instead of in a stable and the 1999 Easter campaign had a really lame version of the Che Guevara poster.

Freak Parade

2010-06-01T14:28:00.008+01:00

I've been looking for a new flatmate it's been a bit of an ordeal. In nearly 20 years of finding new flatmates on and off, I've never had this much trouble. There were a couple of really nice people who decided not to move in for financial or location reasons, some who just weren't right for the flat - or I wasn't right for them. And then there were the rest who rang, emailed and came round.

There were the ones who rang and whose sole word of English seemed to be FLAT. There was one couple who said they had a super cat even though the advert plainly said no couples and no pets. And the email from 'Two lovely Spanish girls and a rabbit'. Some people couldn't understand why I might want to know a bit about them before letting them into my home. One was a pastor and her email was full of God Blesses. Needless to say, she wasn't invited to visit.

Of the ones who came round, there was the nerdy guy who was about six foot eight. He sat on the sofa and stared straight ahead, not looking at me once. He did briefly liven up when we talked about graphic novels but struggled to be polite about my small collection. There was the man who was surprised I had anything intelligent to say about football. There was the Spanish artist who wanted to move because her current flatmate was 'a dirty man'. She was supposed to call me the next day and didn't. When I rang her, she said, 'I am working'. Silly me for interrupting an artist. I checked out her website and her work was pretty crap so she had nothing to be haughty about.

One guy in his early forties had been a Jehovah's Witness since childhood and just left. He sounded OK on the phone. When he came round, he stared at me the whole time like he was trying to hypnotise me. He insisted on taking his shoes off when he came in and had a hole in his sock with his big toe poking through which, in other people, wouldn't have mattered but it just added to his creepiness.

One young woman was so anorexic she looked like she'd snap if you slammed the door hard. I guess she wouldn't take up much space in the flat or hog the kitchen but I've done Flatmate With Issues and it's exhausting. Another one was scared of the lift.

There was the older Australian woman who didn't like the flat but wanted to meet me for a drink as she thought we could be friends. I have friends, thanks. I want a flatmate.

There were a few who turned their noses up at the lack of dishwasher or ensuite bathroom or my smallish TV. What do you expect for this money in central Camden?

Quite often, as soon as I opened the door, I knew they weren't the right person but still had to show them the flat and pretend to be interested in their lives. No doubt some of them felt the same about me.

I thought I'd have a look at the competition to see what other people were saying in their adverts. There was one on Gumtree from a middle aged man who was looking for a very young woman. The rent was just a few pounds a week, but she would be required to cook dinner, do the ironing and provide him with a daily massage. He said there was 'nothing funny' about it. I reported him to the admins anyway.

One woman who came to see the flat told me that she'd been to view another place and turned up early, so she rang the landlord. She'd spoken to him the day before but the number was now 'not available'. She got to the house and the front door was open, so she knocked and went in to find a lot of junk in the derelict-looking hallway and on the stairs. No one was around. She got to the door of the flat, which was also open. She then decided that she could well be in the opening scenes of a horror film and left.

I have a flatmate now, and he seems pretty normal. But then, so do I.

Are You Late? - the Catholic Version

2010-05-25T15:07:00.014+01:00

After the fuss made by various pro-life and religious groups about the advert for Marie Stopes International on Channel 4 that I wrote about here, I've picked a couple of religious reactions to specific cases of abortion to take a rational look at.

Sister Margaret McBride is a nun, senior administrator and member of the ethics board at St Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. A 27 year old woman who was 11 weeks pregnant and already had four children, was admitted to the hospital with pulmonary hypertension and told by doctors that if she carried on with the pregnancy, the risk to her life was almost certainly 100%.

Sister McBride met with the woman and with doctors and decided that this case was an exception to Catholic health care directives. She gave the go-ahead, the abortion was performed and the woman survived.

The woman, Sister McBride and every other Catholic involved in either the decision or the procedure was then excommunicated by Bishop Thomas J Olmstead. McBride was also re-assigned to 'lesser duties'.

In a Q&A statement, the Diocese of Phoenix said:

What can be done when a pregnant woman's life is in danger?

The underlying condition should be treated.

If the baby cannot survive outside the womb and the mother may die, isn't it better to save at least one life?

First, we have to remember that a physician cannot be 100% sure that a mother would die. Second, the mother's life cannot be preferred over the child's. It is not better that the mother live the rest of her existence having had her child killed.

Why was Sr McBride excommunicated?

Since she gave her consent and encouraged an abortion she automatically excommunicated herself from the Church.

Does that mean that all women who have had an abortion are excommunicated?

Yes, anyone who has had an abortion is automatically excommunicated. But so are those who encouraged the abortion, helped pay for the abortion, or performed the abortion, including those who directly assisted in its performance.

What is the purpose of excommunication?

The purpose is to repair scandal, to restore justice and to reform the offender. It is a scandal to the entire Church that a woman religious [a nun] would consent to and encourage an abortion. It is also a scandal that a Catholic Hospital would perform such a reprehensible act.

Is anything more required of a woman religious who has been excommunicated by participating in an abortion?

Canon Law requires that a member of a religious community be dismissed from religious life unless their superior decides that dismissal is not completely necessary.

Is St Joseph's Hospital in danger of losing their endorsement from Bishop Olmsted?

These realities are a scandal to the faithful and must cease if CHW wishes to maintain recognition as a Catholic institution in the Diocese of Phoenix.

Another example:

Last year, a nine year old Brazilian girl was pregnant with twins after being raped, allegedly by her stepfather. The authorities said that the abuse started when she was six. The doctor, the medical team and the child's mother were excommunicated by Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of Recife. He said that "A graver act than rape is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life".

The child was not excommunicated because she was a minor. Sobrinho explained that "The church is benevolent when it comes to minors".

Finally, in Canada, Cardinal Ouellet said that the crime of rape should not be compounded by another crime, that of abortion.

These stories have all caused strong reactions in the media. Should we be surprised? Is this a rational response? These are three men just doing their job, saying what they have been hired to say, following the company line. They have done nothing inconsistent or unexpected. While the nun was humane and undoubtedly aware of the consequences of her decision, she was effectively willfully breaking her employment contract.

The fable of the scorpion and the frog comes to mind. A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is afraid, but the scorpion reassures him that if he stung the frog, he would drown as well. The frog agrees and half way across the river, the scorpion stings him, and they both start to sink. When the frog asks why, the scorpion says "I'm a scorpion, it's my nature."

The Catholic Church is a competitive, hierarchical and deeply conservative organisation. Anyone with ambition is not going to speak out against company policy if he wants to rise up the ranks. While a parish priest with no ambition or talent for politics can turn a blind eye, any careerist cleric will follow what the men higher up the hierarchy say and do while waiting for a chance to replace them (if it is God's will, of course...). You don't get to be Pope by rocking the boat when it comes to issues like sexuality and female reproduction.

It is not rational to expect them to act otherwise. All the evidence from the past points to them behaving like this again. It's kind of a reproducible experiment.

The news is not that the Catholic Church, yet again, has done exactly what it says on the tin, but that Sister McBride put humanity before dogma.

In case this seems like an isolated case, one in six hospital beds in the US is in a Catholic institution.

Are you late?

2010-05-20T11:24:00.008+01:00

Marie Stopes International have launched a new campaign called Are You Late?, part of which is an advert that will be shown on Channel 4 at 10.10pm on 24 May 2010 and then throughout June. This will be the first ever advert for pregnancy and abortion advisory services on TV.

The advert and the campaign were set up after research showed that only 42% of adults in the UK know where to get specialist advice other than from their GP.

The campaign aims to give information about services and also to encourage people to discuss abortion more openly. One in three women have one. In 2008, 215,975 were performed in the UK and in 2009, Marie Stopes International performed about one in three of all abortions in England and Wales.

I wrote a submission to BCAP for the National Secular Society about the advertising of condoms and advisory services a while ago and also wrote about the Christian Medical Forum's response to the consultation - they were one of the religious groups who tried to stop such adverts happening.

Not surprisingly, pro-life organisations are against the advert. The Society For The Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) put out a press release saying: 'Allowing abortion to be advertised on TV will lead to more unborn babies being killed and to more women and girls suffering the after-effects of abortion. Abortions ads will trivialise abortion. It is an insult to the hundreds of women hurt by abortion every day. Such ads are offensive and will mislead viewers about the reality of abortion'.

Emotive statements backed up by no evidence whatsoever.

Firstly, the slipperly slope argument is a favourite of groups who want to deny women control over their own lives and sexual health. It's similar to the argument that, if you give young people sex education, it will encourage them to go out and have sex. Or the argument put forward by the Catholic Church in Scotland that if young women are given the potentially life-saving HPV vaccine, this will make them promiscuous. SPUC reason that abortion will be trivialized, presumably meaning that women will start to see it as a form of contraception, which is another old argument, backed up by no evidence

They give no details about how women are hurt by abortion. As to suffering after-effects, research has found that 'the time of greatest distress is likely to be before the abortion. While some women may experience sensations of regret, sadness and guilt after an abortion, the overwhelming responses are relief and happiness'. Pro-life groups may claim to be concerned for women but they always put the tiny ball of cells first, even when a woman's life and well-being is at risk.

Then the press release tries another tactic. It says that 'Abortion is in English law a criminal offence'.

I rang their press officer who quoted me the Offences Against the Person Act, Section 58.

The Offences against the Person Act 1861 (24 & 25 Vict. c.100) consolidated provisions related to offences against the person from a number of earlier statutes into a single Act to simplify the law. It's essentially a revised version of an earlier consolidation Act, the Offences against the Person Act 1828.

Section 58 replaces section 6 of the Offenses Against the Person Act 1837 and says: Abortion by unlawfully administering any poison or noxious thing is an offence.

However, SPUC are forgetting or ignoring or wilfully misrepresenting one thing - the Abortion Act 1967. This is 'An Act to amend and clarify the law relating to termination of pregnancy by registered medical practitioners'.

In summary, the Act states that a person is not guilty of an offence under the law as long as certain conditions are met, mostly to do with who authorizes and carries out the termination, and where. An abortion carried out by an approved practitioner in a hospital or approved clinic is not against the law. Moreover, 'No offence under the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 shall be committed by a registered medical practitioner who terminates a pregnancy in accordance with the provisions of this Act'.

So when SPUC say that 'Abortion is in English law a criminal offence', they are talking about a law that is 43 years out of date and which is based on a law from nearly 100 years ago. Getting emotive about abortion is par for the course with them and similar groups. But they are also ignoring a law that doesn't suit their prejudices and wilfully misleading the public, not just in a press release that has limited circulation, but also in the media. As a lawyer I know put it, they are "irresponsibly misrepresenting the law". It might be termed a sin of omission. SPUC is claiming that the advert 'will mislead viewers about the reality of abortion' but that is exactly what they are doing.

Dr Ed Mitchell, a GP and member of the Secular Medical Forum, commented: 'Abortion up to 24 weeks pregnancy is legal in English law. Indeed, abortions are paid for by the NHS, who offer counselling to help women make the right choice. The SPUC's statement that such a service is illegal is grotesque, a piece of misinformation affecting women at a vulnerable stage of their lives just when they need unbiased information and help'.

Indeed, if they are right, then thousands of doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals are criminals, and the NHS has institutionalized law-breaking.

It's becoming standard practice for groups or individuals to ignore laws that don't suit them, or to think they are exempt from them, most often because of religious convictions.

There have been several recent examples of attempts to flout the Equality Law relating to non-discrimination against homosexuals ( the Christian B&B owner refusing gay guests, Gary McFarlane the Relate councillor refusing to work with gay couples, Lillian Ladele refusing to conduct civil partnerships for example). And in many cases, when the law finds against them, they claim persecution.

As Lord Justice Laws said of the McFarlane case: "We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs. The precepts of any one religion - any belief system - cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens, and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic. (...) The conferment of any legal protection of preference upon a particular substantive moral position on the ground only that it is espoused by the adherents of a particular faith, however long its tradition, however long its culture, is deeply unprincipled."

While not everyone who opposes abortion does so on religious grounds, the vast majority of pro-lifers are religious.

SPUC and other pro-life groups do not represent the majority of the population, They do not even represent the majority of religious people in this country. A YouGov poll in November 2007 showed that 63% of people agreed/ strongly agreed that 'it should be legal for a woman to have an abortion when she has an unwanted pregnancy'. What's more, 58% of self-identified Protestants and 43% of Catholics agreed/strongly agreed with this statement too. The Marie Stopes survey showed that 76% of adults supported showing such adverts at appropriate times.

SPUC and their ilk are also confusing being pro-choice with being pro-abortion. As a spokesman for Marie Stopes said: "We are empowering women to make choices. We believe that women have the right to choose the destiny of their bodies and their lives and we are always client-led. If a woman is clear that she wants an abortion, she is a grown woman who has made up her own mind and we support that. If she is not sure, we will counsel her on all the options, including adoption.

"SPUC's agenda is that they do not want women to have the right to an abortion in any circumstances; they always put the foetus above the woman's rights." As an illustration of what would happen if they got their way, he added: " In parts of the world where abortion is illegal, around 70,000 women die every year from backstreet abortions."

SPUC are trying to stop the advert being shown.

UPDATE 4 AUGUST 2010

Complaints about the ad, mostly by religious groups and individuals, have been rejected by the ASA.

Homeopathy is witchcraft

2010-05-18T20:35:00.005+01:00

The British Medical Association's annual conference of junior doctors has declared that homeopathy is witchcraft. They have voted for a blanket ban and an end to all placements for trainee doctors to teach them homeopathic principles.

Dr Tom Dolphin, deputy chairman of the BMA's junior doctors committee in England told the conference: "Homeopathy is witchcraft. It is a disgrace that nestling between the National Hospital for Neurology and Great Ormond Street there is a National Hospital for Homeopathy which is paid for by the NHS".

As The Times of India commented: "It was not insulting for members of the British Medical Association to describe the practice of homeopathy as witchcraft. What would be insulting to the intelligence of the observer and the basic principles of reason is to suggest that it is anything but."

This is excellent news for all of us who care about evidence, science and the survival of the cash-strapped NHS.

Latest figures show 54,000 patients are treated each year at four NHS homeopathic hospitals in London, Glasgow, Bristol and Liverpool, at an estimated cost of £4 million.

Of course, the defenders of homeopathy have responded. Crystal Sumner, chief exec of the British Homeopathic Association (BHA) said that cutting NHS funding ignores the views of the public, especially patients with chronic conditions.

She said: "Homeopathy helps thousands of people who are not helped by conventional care. We don't want it to be a substitute for mainstream care, but when people are thinking about making cuts to funding, I think they need to consider public satisfaction, and see that homeopathy has a place in medicine".

She may not want it to be a substitute for mainstream care but she and the rest of them certainly want homeopathy to be given equal standing with medical treatment and the same respect.

Public satisfaction is an interesting defence. Boots sell homeopathic remedies not because they work but because people like them. By this logic, patients should be given any kind of treatment they choose, as long as it makes them happy. If public opinion were the yardstick of medicine, we'd still be putting butter on burns.

Seeing a practitioner who gives you a lot of attention, makes a sad face when you talk about your problems and lots of sympathetic noises may make you feel nice, but most right-thinking people would prefer someone who knows a) what caused your problem and b) how to cure it. It's nice if the doctor smiles but it's nicer if they save your life.

Chronic conditions are an area where mainstream medicine may appear to fail because in some cases, conditions can be managed but not cured. Some alternative treatments may make a condition more bearable and if a patient chooses to pay for it, then that's up to them - as long as they know what they are getting. Which, with a lot of alt med, is a big fat placebo. Feeling better is not the same as being better.

Another defender of alternative medicine is Dr Mukesh Batra of Dr Batra's Positive Health Clinic, who opened a clinic on Harley Street two months ago. He said, "We're in the heart of their city, not some far-flung suburb".

It would seem that the location of a clinic is an indicator of its efficacy, so if you attend a tiny local hospital in a rural area, you're probably not getting very good treatment, according to that logic. When you walk into a clinic, it really should smell of money if you want to be cured.

He also says: "A homoeopath needs to obtain a five-year degree so they're not all quacks".

Which would imply that most of them are. He also has homoeopathy clinics in Muscat and the United Arab Emirates - jolly nice locations, so they must be good.

The BMA motion was supported by Chairman Dr Hamish Meldrum, but it will only become official policy of the whole organisation if it is agreed by their full conference next month. After parliament's science and technology committee reported in February that 'the NHS should cease funding homeopathy. It also concludes that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) should not allow homeopathic product labels to make medical claims without evidence of efficacy. As they are not medicines, homeopathic products should no longer be licensed by the MHRA' it does look like the writing may be on the wall for publicly-funded homeopathy.

Dr Antony Lempert of the Secular Medical Forum commented: "Homeopaths believe that serial dilution increases potency. The results of scientific experiments do not support this belief and have shown conclusively that homeopathy performs no better than placebo. Yet, following the logic of the homeopathic argument maybe just one more experiment should be conducted to serially dilute the number of NHS-funded homeopaths. In the interests of compassion and human rights, the ten strikes against a hard object known as succussion, could be deferred until the dilution process had removed all traces of actual homeopaths.

It would be ironic to prove that the memory of homeopathy is more effective than the real thing. The true value of homeopathy would then be forever imprinted on the memory of the NHS which would have the added benefit of more money to spend on proven treatments."