Kenyan Safari

It’s 2008. Mobs are rampaging and pillaging. Men, women and children hacked to death. Primitive weapons like machetes, clubs and bow and arrows are being used to deadly effect by the hordes. Blood thirsty gangs roam wild. People being burnt alive. Social order breaking down.

Welcome to Kenya. Welcome to the Modern Africa.

It’s good to see that modern society hasn’t extinguished the naturally brutal and murderous nature of some of our fellow men. It’s the ‘kill or be killed’ world of our Neolithic ancestors once again. It’s alive and killing right before our First World eyes. Real survival of the fittest stuff.

It would be a great addition to the usual Serengeti tourist trail. Come and see fine examples of pre-domesticated Homo sapiens species in their natural environment. Free range of course. They hunt in packs and communicate in chants and screams. See a live burning of a villager at 12pm and 4pm. Witness the hacking to death of a child from a neighbouring tribe. T-shirts and mugs are available in the gift shop afterwards.

Anti Freezer Masala

Incompetent killer housewife Kate Knight has been found guilty of the attempted murder of her husband.  She tried to knock him off and get her sticky fingers on the company payout by poisoning the poor bloke with anti-freeze (ethylene glycol). She put the anti-freeze into his curry and his red wine. She didn’t kill him but manage to blind him, give him some brain damage and piss him off big time.

If she had studied medicine or pharmacology, she would have known that alcohol is a COMPETITIVE INHIBITOR of ethylene glycol. The alcohol in the wine was actually helping to save her husband’s life. The curry was fine. Indeed a clever move to mask the bitter taste of anti-freeze. She should have kept the alcohol away from him and just let the anti-freeze do its toxic job.

Other pharmacological ways to knock off your spouse to get hold of big payouts-

1. Polonium ingestion. Made famous by the death of Russian exile Alexander Litvinenko. Effective and deadly but it’s a real bugger to get hold of. Also, leaves a bit of a nasty radioactive trace for the cops to follow. Avoid sushi bars.

2. Insulin overdose. Handy if your spouse if diabetic and on insulin. 1ml of insulin usually contains about 100 units of insulin- enough to sent them into a coma. Give them 10ml of the stuff and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

3. Warfarin poisoning. A bit suspicious if they are not on it routinely but there’s a lot of people out there taking their 6pm dose of rat poison. Grind up 100mg into their food and stand well back.

4. Beta-blocker or TCA (antidepressant) overdose. A hit and miss choice really. Can jigger up the heart’s conduction system but most people do not die.

5. Paracetamol poisoning. Can cause liver failure even in modest overdose. Best to do it repeatedly over many weeks just to be sure. Effervescent tablets are almost tasteless. Great with wine and a good cheese. Stop when your spouse turns bright orange.

6. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Difficult to pull off without making it look too dodgy or killing yourself in the process. Blocking up the exhaust for the boiler or gas fire will do the trick. Buy your spouse a 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle and make any excuse to leave the house for a few hours. Try a 10,000 piece puzzle if 5,000 doesn’t work.

You can HIV it all

Great news for Merck & Co. Their new anti HIV drug Raltegravir has got its UK licence. Priced at around £6,000 per year per patient, the UK market alone is likely to exceed £40m a year. If you factor in the rising numbers of HIV patients and the increasing numbers of resistant strains being seen, it’s Ca-ching for lucky Merck shareholders. Just one UK drug could be raking in over £1m a week very soon.
PS To those of you who didn’t know, HIV is now a chronic disease very much like diabetes or under-active thyroid. It can’t be cured but there are lots of nice expensive medicines out there that will keep you healthy. That is as long as the NHS is willing to pay for it. So to you tax payers out there, don’t start making a fuss about how your tax pounds are spent. That way, there might be a junket or two for the poor harassed doctors who’ll be signing the prescriptions.

And HIV patients will live longer.

And appear healthier.

And stay sexually active.

UK brings back the death penalty

The deportation of a dying Ghanaian woman from Wales back to her home country this week raises important questions about medical ethics as well as a wider question about health and immigration.

The doctors treating this woman allowed immigration officials to take her out of a Welsh hospital where she was being kept alive with dialysis. She needed this treatment due to kidney failure as a result of cancer. Everyone knew that she couldn’t afford the dialysis treatment back in her home country. It was a death sentence imposed by the UK government.

The Lancet, a highly respected medical journal called it ‘atrocious barbarism’ and I agree. They called for doctors’ leader to express outrage and the silence from those guys is still deafening.

Non-maleficence or not doing harm is a centre pillar in medical ethics. The others being Justice, Autonomy and Beneficence (doing good). They are non negotiable. They are embedded into any medical oath that a doctor takes upon qualifying. By allowing a dying woman to be forcibly repatriated with no guarantee of appropriate follow up and treatment, the doctors essentially withdrew treatment against the patient’s wishes. To stop life saving treatment against the patient’s best interests is doing gross harm. The GMC should investigate the conduct of those doctors involved.

We do not deport people back to countries if they would face a threat to their lives or face persecution for their beliefs. It seems that it’s OK though to send them back to die as a result of lack of medical intervention. The same would be true for those with HIV being deported back to a country whose health system cannot afford the anti-retroviral drugs needed to control the virus.

The UK is up there near of top of the world’s wealth tables. Is it right for the State to withdraw treatment and to send someone to their deaths? I think it’s not.

Get ready for NegEq

There  is a new report almost everyday now about the state of the economy and its effect on house prices. The latest one from the surveyors point towards a 1990s style blitz on house prices. The spectre of negative equity once again looms large on the horizon.

Negative equity is when the mortgage on your home is more than what the house is worth. Although as long as you keep paying the mortgage it’s not such a massive disaster- you’ve still got a place over your heads. Admittedly it would be a bit of a bummer if all that equity you were banking on for your retirement suddenly became a minus amount.

I’m OK though. I couldn’t care less about house prices. I bought my house 9 years, extended it 2 years ago and now I’ve got just one year left on the mortgage. Having made the decision to stay put and build a few extra rooms onto the back of the house, I’m happy with my lot. House prices can tumble all they want and I won’t be bothered.

The New Labour economic miracle bubble bursting will be painful for a lot of people who mortgaged to the hilt- up to 5 or 6 times salary in some cases. It will hurt those who thought that buy-to-let was a win-win situation. It will definitely sting for those in negative equity who were unable to keep up their repayments, get repossessed by the bank and then find that they are still in debt to their eyeballs because their house was worth diddly squat.

However it’s not all bad. There’ll be a lot less crap TV about houses and renovations. Sarah Beeny and Kirsty Allsopp will disappear from our screens hopefully. I can’t wait.

The End of Things

I’ve had a sort of epiphany. It’s been a sudden and overwhelming sense of the utter banality of modern life and its reliance on people buying things and spending money.

I’ve come to the realisation that modern capitalism is a vicious circle – see below.

 Chronic discontent is cultivated for us to feel that we must fill our empty lives with more and more junk. This can’t go on forever. As people buy more and more junk, more and more of the world’s resources are getting used up. And the current trend is that more and more people will be getting onto this never ending treadmill. Enter China and India onto the giant economic hamster wheel. Potentially 2 billion more people buying things, using up oil and spewing more CO2 into the atmosphere. Where will it end?