Though you wouldn’t believe it from the tripe spouted forth in the media, the outcome of the South Island Neurosurgery saga is a triumph of level-headed reason in the face of massive public pressure. It is clear from reading the actual report from the panel entrusted with gathering the facts and making a decision, that [...]

Dear Mr. Ryall I hear you are occasionally dropping in to emergency departments unannounced and talking to patients. This is excellent news. Under no circumstances should you continue to sound defensive about this in any way. After all, exactly who is the hospital service for, if not the patients accessing it? How can it be [...]

The MacDoctor often refers to the pharmacy as the $3 shop (All funded script items cost $3.00). And, yes, patients often stare at him blankly, but one has to get one’s fun from somewhere. A recent Herald article claims that this fee is sometimes too much for low-income people causing them not to pick up [...]

Apparently there is a war on obesity. Trouble is, there does not seemed to be a well-defined enemy in this war. Is it the fast food industry? Perhaps it is the actual fat in foods? Maybe it is the obese person themselves? Or their wicked, neglectful parents? Or perhaps it is carbohydrates, not fats, that [...]

It seems that the Ministry of Health is now concerned that women may get the wrong message and think that they no longer need regular cervical smears after they have had the cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil. The MacDoctor wishes to point out that he made this exact point nearly two years ago. He wonders how [...]

Audrey Young reports that the government say they will not scrap Pharmac as part of a free-trade deal with the US. Actually, National is being quite a bit more cagey than that. Tony Ryall is simply not commenting and Tim Groser is being positively vague as this shows: He said Pharmac was an outstandingly successful [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article. After having been too tired to spot that yesterday’s “Black Easter” post was yet another example of spam journalism, I thought I had better redeem myself. There is nothing like a quick flick to the health articles to find sensationalist spam. [...]

Congratulations to Tony Ryall who has, in a first for a government, delivered his primary election health promise – a significant rise in elective surgery. And handsomely too: The number of elective operation increased by 11,900 on 2008 and National’s target was a mere 4,000. This post is not about Mr. Ryall’s good news, but [...]

The Timaru Herald has run an article on the website offtheradar.co.nz, who are calling for the removal of Gardasil from the vaccination regime because it causes 16 times more serious adverse events than it prevents cervical cancer fatalities. Like most of the websites “crusading” against vaccines, it destroys its own credibility by drawing non-scientific conclusions [...]

The Dominion Post writes yesterday about the looming shortage of oncologists. Four cancer doctors have resigned in a very short space of time. The article explores all the usual reasons why doctors leave, particularly the worrying ones of overwork,  which can only be fixed by employing more hard-to-get doctors. What struck me, though, was the [...]