It seems that one of our hospitals once again makes a grievous mistake and everyday New Zealanders pay the price for it:
Dr Roman Hasil botched eight of 32 32 tubal ligations (sterilisation procedures), resulting in six pregnancies.
In his report Commissioner Ron Paterson censures the doctor and the DHB for “serious failings in the care of [...]
Archive for February, 2008
All I can do is sigh
Posted in Public Health, WTF on February 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Random banned books
Posted in Education, History, Personal, WTF on February 25, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I disagree with the practice in some places of banning books, which I view as a generally stupid and anti-educational practice (there would be certain exceptions of course, borderline pornographic romance novels would be one example I could think of, but even then…). Thankfully, there are groups that seem to want to fight back against [...]
Psychic sexual powers and murder
Posted in WTF on February 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I really can’t fathom this murder case going on in Australia terribly well:
His de facto wife, Angela Wells, 29, of Blacktown, was a long-time friend of Ms Mayfield and introduced the pair.
All three bonded with each other over a shared interest in the supernatural, and Shepherd persuaded Ms Mayfield to sleep with him by promising [...]
This is why I don’t adopt early in a format war
Posted in Technology on February 20, 2008 | 1 Comment »
It appears that HD-DVD may have just had the last nail in the coffin as Toshiba have decided to cease producing new HD-DVD players or marketing them:
Toshiba is refusing to give any refunds or sweeteners to HD DVD player buyers who were burned by the death of the format, saying they still have “inherent value”.
Overnight, [...]
Turtles all the way down for Florida
Posted in Pseudoscience, Science on February 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
With Florida deciding if they should adopt good science standards or insert nonsense from the usual suspects, I think a quick reminder of my previous “turtles all the way down” essay is in order. Despite the age of this and that it’s a fairly common anti-ID argument, I’ve never really seen it adequately refuted. One [...]
Nature and HIV pessimism
Posted in HIV, Public Health, Science on February 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This news article in Nature, entitled, HIV can ‘never be cured’ caught my interest pretty much immediately as it describes some interesting new research on the HIV virus and for its unusually pessimistic title. For one thing, it’s true that HIV is a very tricky virus to get rid of because it attacks the immune [...]
Goat guitar
Posted in Humour on February 14, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The series American Dad, depicting a dysfunctional CIA agent and his equally dysfunctional family wasn’t really that good a show at first considering the pedigree of the guys who made it (Family Guy), but I must admit it’s getting better every season. I don’t think anything will quite top this bit in a while:
[...]
Darwin day
Posted in History, Science on February 13, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Happy Darwin day to everyone and have a good time reflecting upon the role of this great mans theory in enhancing our understanding of biology today! Scientificblogging and the Pandas thumb will both be collecting some interesting posts on Darwin over the day or so. One I’ve found that I particularly liked, was by Josh [...]
Herceptin court case
Posted in Public Health on February 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
From what I understand of Herceptin, I can’t quite understand why we don’t fund a full (one year) course of the drug. Neither can a group of women with breast cancer, who are taking New Zealands drug funding agency Pharmac to court to find out and have had a small win:
Eight breast cancer survivors have [...]
Farm animal cannibalism (Repost)
Posted in Farming, Public Health, Science on February 11, 2008 | 2 Comments »
[This is a repost from my previous blog that's semi-relevant to another topic I'm going to bring up in the near future on this blog. It's also a cheap way of getting postcount++ while I don't have the time to make a totally new post. Enjoy!]
Cannibalism is one of those practices that, at least as [...]
