Dr Shaun Holt is no stranger to controversy, having last year laid into the Chiropractors. Now he, along with a number of other researchers, have written a letter to the New Zealand Medical Journal saying: Practicing homeopathy or endorsing it by referring patients is not consistent with the ethical or regulatory requirements of practising medicine [...]

I confess to being somewhat perplexed at the massive song and dance surrounding the preliminary hearing of the circumstances surrounding the death of Michael Jackson. I would have thought that the prosecution had a more-or-less open-and-shut case against Jackson’s “doctor”, Conrad Murray. Perhaps the lure of all that celebrity glamour was a bit too tempting [...]

Though many people are highly critical of the columns of Garth George, I often find that, past the general curmudgeonly nature of his columns, he often makes a great deal of sense. Unfortunately, he tends to couch his points in a fashion designed to bring out the worst in the blogosphere. It is not simply [...]

I know it seems counterintuitive that the US, home of rabid, wall-to-wall lawyers, should be slow in providing medical discipline, but it is true. You may recall the case of Nadya Suleman, who had octuplets after her fertility “treatment”, despite already having six children (via IVF treatment) and despite still living with her parents. I [...]

A fascinating insight into the mind of an unredeemed marxist can be found in John Minto’s blog today: The greatest tragedy of Taito Phillip Field is not his being the first MP in New Zealand history to be convicted of bribery, corruption and obstruction of justice. Neither is it that his career as the first [...]

At the risk of descending into cruel sensationalism, I was struck by the following two pictures of Michael and Latoya Jackson. It seems that, in their quest for plastic perfection, they have carved out identical faces for themselves. Here is Michael: And this is Latoya: Now, I realise that they have always resembled each other [...]

Controversy is brewing over a US (where else?) IVF clinic that is offering parents the choice of eye and hair colour and sex of their baby. Apparently eugenics is back in vogue again (if it ever left). Mankind has often attempted to strive for perfection, usually by breeding rather than genetic selection. From the attempts [...]

A new process has made it possible to turn skin cells into stem cells, obviating the need for human embryos for stem cell research. It is not fully perfected yet, but will almost certainly provide stem cell researchers with “ethical” material in abundance. These new stem cells are potentially much better than embryonic ones, because [...]

Have you ever noticed how the word unethical seems to take on the same meaning as politically correct? There’s a great illustration of this in the Herald today. Dr. Shaun Holt writes our ethics system for approval of new research is now so unwieldy, it is preventing perfectly legitimate research from being done. Shaun recounts his [...]

Professor Mike Ardagh, from the Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences, spoke yesterday about an ethics study which showed that doctors who save patients’ lives against their wishes could open themselves up to legal action. The study proposed two scenarios – one with a young suicide who wakes from his coma just long enough [...]