No place for women in gynaecology

Wendy Savage, who managed to combine bringing up four children with a career as Britain's first female consultant obstetrician, has been nominated for a lifetime achievement award by the British Medical Journal. A lifelong campaigner for women's rights, her support for pregnant mothers being able to choose their method of delivery, including home births, led to a lengthy suspension from work and an accusation of incompetence in 1985. An inquiry cleared her of all charges.

Sexism, bordering on outright misogyny, was never far from the surface in the various criticisms levelled against her. Indeed, Savage told Tom Foot in the Islington Tribune this week, that when she first came to London to pursue her chosen profession, her senior consultant told her: 'There's no place for women in gynaecology and obstetrics.'

The results of voting for the award, which finishes today, will be announced in March.

Stop the lies about our health service

First, let me declare an interest. Both I and my grandson (who was born prematurely, has been in and out of Great Ormond Street children's hospital and will require continuing treatment for the rest of his life) have received the sort of care from the National Health Service that would have been beyond the means of the majority of people in the US. Like the vast majority of people in the UK, I'm proud of the NHS and I'm sick of those wealthy vested interests that try to run it down.

Now let me urge you to sign up to the message below to the people of America. About 80,000 people have done so already; it will take you a couple of minutesto join them.

UK to US: the truth about the NHS

Barack Obama's movement for change in the US is at risk of collapsing - in large part because of lies about healthcare in the UK!

It's incredible, but Obama's health plan, and with it his entire presidency, could be derailed if big corporations and the radical right manage to convince Americans that the NHS is a nightmare rationed service that refuses to treat patients and abandons the most needy, such as Stephen Hawking, without care.

We need a huge popular outcry to show the truth - how proud and grateful we are in the UK to have a public healthcare system that works, despite its imperfections. Sign on to the message to America and forward this link - if enough of us sign, we'll cause a stir in US media and help change the debate: http://www.avaaz.org/en/reform_health_care_uk

US healthcare is run by large corporations - it's the most expensive in the world, but ranks 37th in quality, and 40 million Americans can't afford any care at all. It's an awful system for people, but corporations make enormous profits, so they're fighting to keep it. Industry lobbyists are ramping up their smear campaigns right now to make sure the Obama plan is dead on arrival when Congress meets in September. Americans are hearing a constant barrage of propaganda that the NHS is a nightmare. Let's say it ain't so.

Myths about the proposed health care reforms http://www.communitycatalyst.org/projects/national_reform/alerts?id=0066

Extreme tactics of the conservative right http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/health/policy/04townhalls.html http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-08-17-voa45.cfm

Paul Krugman on health care
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=2&scp=31&sq=health&st=cse

The extent of the health care lobby
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aZdbr0YXz5jI

Health insurers stocks rise as health care plans fade http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSTRE57G4BU20090817?sp=true

Earlobe creases, Hadrian, my nephew and me

I have just discovered that I have creases in my ear lobes. Big deal, you might say, except that diagonal ear-lobe creases are, to quote one recent medical study on the subject, ‘significantly associated with coronary artery disease and coronary risk factors’. How significantly? Creases in both lobes have a ‘positive predictive value’ of 89.4%, according to the study. Or, to put it another way, they mean a 77% increased risk of heart attack (33% if only in one lobe), according to another report.

I wouldn’t have known any of this if it hadn’t been for the Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum, where the combination of my historical/archaeological expertise and, more importantly, museum membership (I can take a guest in free) means I’ve been acting as an unofficial guide to every friend or family member with half an interest in things Roman. My last visit before the exhibition closes tomorrow was to take my 11-year-old nephew, recently back from a holiday in Rome and interested enough in Hadrian to know that he built the Pantheon and that his mausoleum is now the Castel Sant’Angelo.

For the umpteenth time, I did my by-now pat routine about Hadrian and his empire, Hadrian and his architecture, Hadrian and his statues, Hadrian and his wall. I curtailed my usual extensive discourse about Hadrian and his sex life, and opted against pointing out all the detail of the homoerotic sex scenes on the Warren Cup. (‘£1.8 million for a mug?’ ‘Bugger me!’ as the Private Eye cover had it when the silver goblet became the museum’s most expensive acquisition a decade ago.)

But I got enough interest from the nephew to keep me going with the Vindolanda tablets (two-millenia-old letters dealing with everything from requests for clean underwear to complaints about the ‘wretched little Brits’), the keys that the Jews took into the desert in the expectation of returning home during the revolt of 132-35, the hobnailed sandal imprint of a Roman soldier preserved on an ancient paving stone – and the diagonal creases on Hadrian’s earlobes.

These were first noticed on statues of Hadrian by Nicholas L Petrakis, a San Francisco MD, who published a paper in 1980 linking the creases to classical writings suggesting that Hadrian died from congestive heart failure resulting from hypertension and coronary atherosclerosis. I pointed out the creases to my nephew on some of the busts of Hadrian in the BM exhibition and told him about the link with heart disease. ‘Are they the same as you’ve got?’ he said.

I must have told this story about Hadrian and his earlobe creases a dozen times since the exhibition opened and no one, least of all me, had ever noticed any creases in my earlobes before now. Have they only just appeared? Old photos are inconclusive. Is my nephew imagining it? The mirror says no. Should I be worried? Medical opinion seems to be divided.

Both earlobe creases and heart disease become more common with age, so the studies may simply be reflecting this fact. (I wish.) And anyway, there’s just as strong a correlation, according to one of these studies, between heart disease and hairy ears, which I don’t have (or didn’t the last time I looked), so I’m taking the usual male approach to personal health issues, putting my fingers in both ears and pretending I never heard my nephew’s question in the first place.