Jan 31 2010 Published by admin under Uncategorized
The debate over assisted suicide will be reopened tomorrow when Sir Terry Pratchett uses the annual Dimbleby Lecture to call for a radical overhaul of the law.
The best-selling author, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, will say that the “time is really coming†for assisted death to be legalised.
He will also offer himself as a “test case†for an assisted suicide tribunal, a body that he believes should be set up to give people legal permission to end their life with medical help.
A poll for the BBC Panorama programme, which will also be screened tomorrow evening, has revealed strong support – 73 per cent – for friends and relatives to be spared prosecution if they help someone with a terminal illness to end their life.
Jan 31 2010 Published by admin under Uncategorized
Doctors are addicted to “every drug under the sun†the head of the first ever confidential GP service for health professionals has warned.
In its first year the clinic has treated NHS staff hooked on drugs including heroin, ketamine, a horse tranquilliser, and methadrone, a drug linked to amphetamines, said Dr Clare Gerada, medical director of the Practitioner Health Programme.
The service also uncovered six cases of undiagnosed psychosis, in which sufferers see things or hear voices.
Jan 31 2010 Published by admin under Uncategorized
Women use more brain power and take longer than men to understand jokes but derive more pleasure from a good punchline, according to scientists.
Experiments at Stanford University in California found that women use more parts of the brain than men to process jokes and have less expectation that they will find them funny.
The findings are part of an emerging body of research helping scientists to unravel the mystery of how our sense of humour works.
Jan 31 2010 Published by admin under Uncategorized
Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove
We pay tribute to the late historian, writer and activist Howard Zinn, who died suddenly on Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of eighty-seven. Howard Zinn’s classic work A People’s History of the United States changed the way we look at history in America. It has sold over a million copies and was recently made into a television special called The People Speak. We remember Howard Zinn in his own words, and we speak with those who knew him best: Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove.
Jan 30 2010 Published by admin under Uncategorized
A growing number of science students on British campuses and in sixth form colleges are challenging the theory of evolution and arguing that Darwin was wrong. Some are being failed in university exams because they quote sayings from the Bible or Qur’an as scientific fact and at one sixth form college in London most biology students are now thought to be creationists.
Jan 29 2010 Published by admin under Uncategorized
But Channel 4 News ‘Who Knows Who’ has been doing a little bed time reading and can reveal some interesting facts about his soon-to-be interrogators.
Perhaps the most interesting link occurs between Blair and committee member Sir Lawrence Freedman.
In 1999, Freedman was invited to help shape “a philosophy that Blair could call his own” on foreign affairs, wrote former New Statesman editor John Kampfner, in his book Blair’s Wars.
Writing in his Daily Mail column, Kampfner claims that Blair’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, contacted Freedman and asked him to propose a strategy for the prime minister.
This input was said to have preceded the “doctrine of the international community” Blair announced in his famous speech to the Economic Club in Chicago in 1999.
