This website is intended for healthcare professionals
This website is intended for healthcare professionals
Freelance writer; Fellow of the Institute of Biomedical Science
According to Laux et al (2016: 395), ‘many individuals receive their first tattoo at age 16–20 years […] with up to 36% of people younger than 40 years having at least one tattoo’ Midwives often care...
In 2010, a national newspaper reported that the National Patient Safety Agency database recorded three women who lost their babies following surgery, saying that,
Germaine Greer wrote that ‘[c]hildbirth has been transformed from an awesome personal and social event into a medical phenomenon’ (Greer, 1984: 19) But given that around 830 women die every day from...
In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), ectogenesis—growing embryos in artificial environments—thrives at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre Here, ‘standardised’ individuals are...
In the late 1970s, while working in a hospital virus lab, I once took receipt of a donated human placenta and umbilical cord It was to enable me to harvest cells capable of supporting the growth of...
In May 2016, a team of UK researchers described how they ‘show human embryos develop in medium supplemented with KnockOut Serum Replacement up to day 13 The experiment was stopped at this point...
In December 2016, a BBC News item (Briggs, 2016) summarised an academic article by a team of Austrian theoretical biologists with the headline: ‘Caesarean births “affecting human evolution”’
In 1967's The Graduate, Mr McGuire advises Dustin Hoffman's character Benjamin on career prospects: ‘I just want to say one word to you Just one word… Plastics’ McGuire was right; Wilcox et al (2015)...
According to the UK charity Bliss (2014: 4): ‘There are 78 000 babies born too soon, too small or too sick in Britain each year’ Apart from the parental fear and anxiety accompanying a premature...
In September 2016, Samantha Jefferies, the 42-year-old widow of a Falklands war veteran, won a High Court case enabling her to keep frozen embryos that she and her husband had created (BBC News, 2016)...
Philosopher Mary Midgley (1992: 3) observed: ‘As the gap between professional science and everyday thinking widens, it gets increasingly hard to work out in what sense most of us can be said to be...
‘The scaling up of breastfeeding to a near universal level could prevent 823 000 annual deaths in children younger than 5 years and 20 000 annual deaths from breast cancer’ (Victora et al, 2016: 475)...
According to Holroyd (1971: 628), in March 1916 the author Lytton Strachey attended a tribunal, seeking exemption from conscription on the grounds of conscientious objection (CO) He was asked by a...
‘Smoking during pregnancy can cause serious pregnancy-related health problems These include complications during labour and an increased risk of miscarriage, premature birth, stillbirth, low birth...
Earlier this year, Dr Amir Attaran (2016) demanded that the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games ‘be postponed, moved, or both as a precautionary concession’ against the spread of Zika virus (ZIKV) He...
BJM supports midwives by sharing expertise and advice to help you build confidence, grow professionally and improve care.
Evidence-based best practice
Peer-reviewed research
Practical guidance
CPD support