Over the years, we all grow used to headlines that capture the imagination like, “Sticky Buns kill 31 in China” or “Two British ships collide, one dies”. Somehow the English language is capable of creating dramatic images in just a few words, converting a simple story of food poisoning into an epic movie where killer buns rampage through a crowded mall until brought down by Chinese kung fu warriors. But, every now and then, the story is both extraordinary and literally true. “College girl avoids loss of all her limbs”. Medicine is still a fairly inexact science. We all know the names of the big diseases and that there are treatments for many of them. But whether patients get the right diagnosis in time for the treatment to work. Well, that is a different story. Take meningitis as an example. The bacteria responsible live happily in the throats for weeks and months and nothing happens. Then, without warning, something as yet unknown, can trigger them into activity. Read More...

How often have we heard the doctor say, “Remember to take the full number of tablets.” but, when we feel better, we stop. It always seems such a waste. Antibiotics are expensive. We always justify keeping the half-empty bottle alongside all the others. You never know, we say to ourselves, they may come in useful. Except, they never do. So, when the day comes for clearing the shelves, what do we do with all these now unwanted drugs? In more innocent days, we might just have thrown them into the dumpster or flushed them down the toilet. Now we should think more about the consequences. Most of the trash from the dumpsters goes into landfill sites. Water washes through the mounds of rubbish, leaching all the chemicals into the ground. Over time, they move down to the water table and from there into streams and rivers. Similarly, what we flush down the toilets passes through the sewers directly into the local rivers or the nearby sea. Further downstream, river water gets taken up by the next town or city. It goes through the treatment plant and into the drinking water supply. Animals drink from the rivers and fish live in the sea. Water is used to irrigate the fields of produce. Over time, this cocktail of chemicals enters our food chain. We get to eat and drink the dilute mixture of drugs. Read More...