health

Quick summit observations

Edit: My Blogging Against Disablism day contribution on this issue is now up here: “BADD: The radical notion that people with disabilities are people, and Australia’s 2020 Summit” ~~~ A couple of things I noticed about the Health section of… Read More ›

Prostitution: regulation, exploitation and death

prostitution is literally killing women, by murder more than any other cause, and a whole heap of people simply don’t care.

No other industry with a comparable mortality rate is unregulated by the state, and in none of those industries would the workers be allowed to sign away their basic health and safety guarantees in order for more pay. Employers who try to coerce miners or firefighters to go into work without adequate safety measures are quite rightly prosecuted and socially condemned, yet the workplace death rate of those professions combined does not match just the homicide rate amongst prostitutes, let alone the death rate once drug overdoses are taken into account.

Hurrah for librarians

If you are restricting access to information, they will notice during the course of their normal duties, and they will let the world know, and then you will look like censoring buffoons. In February, in line with various other information-stifling… Read More ›

Fetal presentations: an economist’s guide

Image Source: Dorland’s Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers. © 2007 by Saunders, an imprint of Elsevier, Inc. Because at least one doesn’t seem prepared to acknowledge that foetal presentation makes any difference to birthing outcomes. Lauredhel has been astonishingly civil… Read More ›

How to intimidate a personal trainer

Laugh in their face when they suggest that your target weight loss in middle age should take you to 5kg below the weight you were as a superfit teenager (competitition squash, cross-country running, speed-skating, bushwalking, bodysurfing, school softball and soccer… Read More ›