Yes, It is the time for reviews of the past year, the perennial favorite of tired journalists the world over. Like me, they knocked this together in mid-December and timed it to drop into whatever publication they owed a column to. Just as I did last year, I thought you might like to have a [...]

You may have already made them or you might make them today. New year’s resolutions. You will probably regret making them sometime within the next week or two. There will be lashings of guilt and outpourings of frustration. Fortunes will be spent on pointless Gym memberships. Garages will be filled with unused gym equipment. Your [...]

As we approach the New Year and my 1000th blog post (which will be sometime in January), allow me a moment of introspection. A number of fellow bloggers have left the blogosphere or drastically reduced their presence. Some have moved to new homes. Some have disappeared without even a farewell (Monkey, where are you?). Some [...]

Quality of Life Issues (involuntary euthanasia) Now we move into tiger country. Involuntary euthanasia is where someone other than the person to be killed makes that decision. Typically, the person whose life is being decided upon is not able to participate in the decision. This is where a current living will comes in handy (see [...]

Quality of Life Issues (voluntary euthanasia) In end-of-life euthanasia, there is, at least, some objective standards which we can use to determine whether a patient is truly dead. When the discussion moves to quality of life, the criteria are far more subjective. What, exactly, determines quality of life? Productivity? Mobility? Social Activity? Dignity? Any and [...]

Merry Christmas to all MacDoctor Readers HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESUS! Now all of you people with nothing better to do than read this blog – Switch off your computer and pay attention to your family and friends, you sad person, you! Add a Comment

End of Life Issues I have blogged about these issues before, using the sad case of Eluana Englaro as an example, here and here. For most of us, death comes as a discrete event. The doctor pokes your corpse a bit, listens for a heartbeat and breathing, finds none and writes out your death certificate. [...]

Euthanasia is a topic not unlike abortion, in that it generates a great deal of heat in a conversation and very little light. Like abortion, it is being practiced in New Zealand. Unlike abortion, there is no set of rules to guide it’s use and overt euthanasia often meets the business end of Law Enforcement [...]

I spend an hour to an hour and a half on Auckland freeways every working day of my life. This gives me plenty of time to listen to music and think about blog posts (if I could write them in traffic, I would be a happy man!) It also gives me plenty of time to [...]

I was thinking about the placebo effect the other day, and it reminded me of this excellent article on the matter at Wired Magazine. The article points out that: It’s not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It’s as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger. And that seems to [...]