- 10 June 2008 Chapter One
- Prelude
People say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I cannot say, but I know is that a vision is worth millions. Mine occurred in September 1971 and I have been acting it out, writing and talking about it ever since. Yet I have come nowhere near doing it justice.
I am rapidly appro...read more
- 09 June 2008 Chapter Two: What Health Is Not
- I need now to clear away some of the ideas that are wrongly attached to the word “health”. Most educated people probably feel they understand it, but I don’t think they do.
To illustrate why, I remember a remote spot on the edge of the town where I lived until recently. By a si...read more
- 08 June 2008 Chapter Three: So What IS Health?
- This has been hard. I have tried out the idea on several small group situations, mainly of intellectually gifted people, and been dismayed to find how hard it was for them to grasp the essential, simple nature of health – at least according to me. I set about writing the chapter from first pr...read more
- 07 May 2008 WHAT PROTECTS THE FRENCH?
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The French do everything wrong, according to British public health messages. They drink more than twice as much alcohol as we do, smoke more and eat more saturated fat. Yet they suffer only half as much premature coronary disease as we do, have half the level of obesity seen in Britain, and live...read more
- 02 May 2008 VACCINE CRUNCH COMING?
- News is managed very tightly in the UK. If it were not for a few news sites on the internet, I would not be aware that there have been deaths related to MMR or measles vaccine in India and in Bolton, Lancashire; that Merck has been asked to clean up its factory or risk loss of its vaccine producer ...read more
- 04 February 2008 FAT IN THE NOUGHTIES
- I remember washday in the 40s. My mother would get all the dirty linen out for the previous week and we spent the whole of Monday sorting it, washing it with a scrubbing board, rinsing, mangling by hand and then hanging it out to dry. The day we bought our first labour-saving hot tub with agitator ...read more
- 28 December 2007 RISK OR OPPORTUNITY?
- A recent report by the Royal Society of Arts on Risk in Childhood was disappointing, but provoked these thoughts.
Risk is a concept from statistics, and statistics are easily abused. They are calculated from the experience of a large population of individuals, and can only be used with confidenc...read more
- 30 October 2007 CERVICAL CANCER: Is Vaccination Wise?
- Suddenly the news is dominated by HPV – the human papilloma virus. Girls from age 12 are to be offered a vaccine called Gardasil™, manufactured by Merck in the USA and licensed for use in this country. It contains killed representatives of four types of HPV, two allegedly responsible fo...read more
- 22 August 2007 The "BLOOK" is begun!
- Dr Mansfield's weblog-book is shaping up. The first two chapters and an introduction are posted on a separate site -
http://WhatIsHealth.spaces.live.com/
You can view it, download it, print it off, comment on it or e-mail it, all free of any cost.
Chapters posted already may change, as fu...read more
- 02 February 2007 Should the NHS Charge?
- A kite is aloft from the Department of Health this week – should certain categories of NHS care be paid for?
We already cover about half the cost of prescriptions and dental care, if we are not at the extremes of life or in poverty. Few NHS clinics will contemplate breast enhancement or re...read more