Harry's Place

In a recent interview Prince Charles warned:
“unless we take trouble and nurture, pay our respect and reverence to nature, she’s a great deal more powerful than we are”.
and advised:
“That’s why it’s so important, I think, to work in harmony with nature rather than thinking somehow we can ignore, dominate, separate ourselves from nature.”
Prince Charles talks [...]

This essay, by the mother of a severely emotionally disturbed 13-year-old boy, has stirred some strong reactions.
And no wonder. It’s painful to read, and it must have been immensely more painful to write.
And yes, the failure to provide adequate help for the mentally ill is a national disgrace.
Update: It seems there are a lot of [...]

Guest post by Andrew Murphy

On the surface, the title of this article seems paradoxical. How can any conservative in the USA even contemplate the concept of the government creating a single-payer health insurance system covering all Americans and, in effect, ending private major medical health insurance?
In this post I hope to make the conservative case [...]

I’m sure we were all delighted when Ken Livingstone announced that he’d (almost?) given his doctor “an orgasm” when the results of his recent medical exam revealed how fighting fit he was.
However, there’s an interesting story in City A.M. this morning, which I suppose may as well be the basis for today’s virtual afray over [...]

Remember a few months ago when some in the audience at a Republican presidential debate shouted approval at the notion of allowing someone without health insurance to die for lack of treatment?
Now we have this remarkably frank assertion by Rick Santorum, who came within nine votes of winning the Iowa Republican caucuses on Tuesday.

No, we [...]

Responding to other candidates at last week’s Republican debate who criticized a Texas law giving college tuition breaks to children of illegal immigrants, Governor Rick Perry said (quite sensibly):
“If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault [...]

The issue of counselling for women seeking an abortion has been under discussion for some time now.  Full plans are due to be announced next week. The campaign has focused on the desirability of securing a more independent advice service for women, and proposes to make it illegal for abortion providers to offer counselling themselves. [...]

At a town hall meeting in Tulsa, the following exchange took place between a questioner and Oklahoma’s Republican Senator Tom Coburn, a physician:

QUESTION: With more and more cuts in Medicare and Medicaid on the horizon, I’m really worried about protecting our frail elderly in the Medicare and Medicaid facilities. So I would like to know [...]

While Brian Haw was forgoing the conventional medical treatment to which he was entitled as a UK resident, a disabled and uninsured North Carolina man was so desperate for conventional medical treatment that he tried to rob a bank of one dollar so he could receive health care for free in jail.
Treatment by the NHS [...]

While Republican Senator John McCain speaks sanely on the issue of torture, his colleague, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, speaks insanely on the issue of health care:

With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means [...]