Submitted by tonyplant on June 26, 2006 - 11:45.
Greetings Comrades, there are exciting proposals that will lead to a revolution in how we raise our children. The government is proposing a database that will track all children from birth in England and Wales. The database will contain a rich assortment of data about children; from "how they are doing in class to whether they are eating enough fruit and veg".
These proposals are nothing like the punitive overtones of the recent Supernanny Initiative. They will form part of a Brave New World in which we will fit children with RFID chips, in-built cameras that will let us know how they interact with their environment and authority figures, and in vivo monitoring that will let us know what they are eating. Repeated failure to achieve the 5 a day target will trigger a reminder text.
Ignoring the fact that this proposal is monumentally unworkable, as should be apparent to anyone who has followed the NHS IT fiasco, what were the proposers of this scheme thinking? Or weren't they? Read Shinga's Since When Have Bureaucracy And Databases Been Synonyms For 'Solution' on this scheme. I will add that there is a lot of evidence that alienation from the environment or social system in which one lives is frequently cited as a factor in depression and anxiety. So, having your children monitored from birth isn't going to unsettle or alienate anyone, is it? It isn't possible that this bold social policy will result in greater levels of depression or mental illness?
read more | 2 comments | social policy | resilience | monitoring | happiness | family life | children | Big Brother
Submitted by tonyplant on March 5, 2006 - 14:58.
I have recommended Dr. Crippens's NHS Blog Doc on several occasions. It is, by turns, a funny, provocative, gut-wrenching insight into what it is like for GPs who are attempting to provide decent medical care within the NHS. The recent entries are gut-wrenching, plain and simple (hint, you will need to look at the comments and read about what happened on Friday morning to grasp even an iota of the anger and despair underlying this post).
Dr. Crippen has written about the lack of availability of basic nursing care (such as the debridement and care of bedsores) on many occasions. He has painfully detailed times when his own judgment and knowledge of his patients was over-ruled by the application of a protocol by someone who does not know his patient (most notably: the incident of the aneurysm and the paramedics; and the difficulty in admitting a patient whom he had assessed as suicidally depressed - Friday's entry). Dr. Crippen has the medical knowledge and (very obviously) a sense of care that is only found in those who are dedicated to their vocation. It seems as if, very regularly, he is frustrated from exercising both of those qualities.
All of my recent reading about allostasis has emphasised that medical innovations have had an extraordinary impact on our quality of life, well-being and longevity. However, in his essay in Allostasis, Homeostasis, and the Costs of Physiological Adaptation, Sterling argues that these extraordinary, high-level medical interventions are being delivered in a low-level, mechanistic way. He argues that these interventions are most successful when they are delivered in the rounded context of care that address all a person's needs - which probably encompass basic nursing needs, and the comfort of human contact.
read more | 2 comments | wicked problem | social policy | medicine | happiness | dumbing-down | dr. crippen
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