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On 18th October, many different churches and groups of Christians will mark the seventh annual Health Care Sunday. Focusing on the NHS in its 50th anniversary year, the aim above all is to stimulate prayer for such issues as: Christians rising above the low morale and sense of despair in...
5th July marks 50 years of the National Health Service, comprehensive healthcare free at the point of need and associated with comprehensive welfare provision. The title of this editorial is Beveridge's 1942 slogan summing up these ambitious aims. Before 5th July 1948 hospital doctors 'were worried: about the nationalisation of...
Several recent high profile euthanasia-related cases have again highlighted the ethical concept of intention. Drs Irwin and Moor announced last July that they had assisted in the deaths of 50 and 150 patients respectively, and gave as reason for these admissions desire to draw attention to what they see as...
In the famous ‘To be, or not to be’ soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the title character continues his muse on life and death with the words: ‘To die, to sleep - No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to....
Hypnos was the Greek god of sleep and his name gives us the words 'hypnosis' (a particular mental state) 'hypnotism' and 'hypnotherapy' (related processes). It also gives us the familiar pharmacological term 'hypnotic' for a drug used to induce sleep. We understand surprisingly little medically about hypnosis, and it has...
Throughout its history Christian Medical Fellowship has campaigned quietly but consistently against euthanasia. There has never been greater cause for concern. In September 1991 there were more than 60 mentions of euthanasia in national newspapers and magazines. In a two week period in October/November that year there were at least...
Introduction On the afternoon of Saturday April 15th 1989, 17 year old football fan Tony Bland was one of hundreds who suffered crush injuries at the Hillsborough Stadium tragedy in Sheffield. On arrival in hospital he was treated intensively with insertion of drains to his bilateral tension pneumothoraces, intubation and...
Introduction Advance Directives, also known less helpfully as 'Living Wills', are documents which allow people to express in advance how they would like to be treated, or how they would not like to be treated, should they become incapable of communicating their views to doctors and other healthcare professionals. They are...
In the third and final article in this series on the Bible's 'What is . . . ?' questions, we look at what is perhaps the most important question of all. In the first article we looked at the nature of man, at what it means to be human. Our...
