Sim-O

What the fuck is it with this thing about abortion and ‘informed choice’? That women should be told of all the choices about what they can do when they discover they are pregnant and don’t want a baby?

As far as I can tell the options are

1. Abortion.
2. carry the pregnancy through to term and put the baby up for adoption
3. carry the pregnancy through to term and keep the baby.

Have I missed any? No, I didn’t think so. Are there any women anywhere in this land that doesn’t know about these choices or are there women about that think the only way to deal with an unwanted pregnancy is to terminate it, that have never heard of adoption? Who is ‘witholding vital information’ about the alternatives to abortion?

So why is Nadine Dorries going on about choices?

The other thing that Dorries may have a point about is the psychological after effects of having an abortion. No one disputes that having an abortion is a serious matter that needs to be thought through with careful consideration. I don’t know if I would be able to go through with it, and I’m sure many women are the some and wouldn’t know what to do either until placed in the situation.

The problem Dorries has is that she may have apoint that there may be serious mental consequences but, as usual, her sources for her information is erm, bollox.

The ‘plethora of studies Dorries cites to support her case are either not very scientific or do not actualy support her point at all.

Several times The MP for Mid-Beds has used the phrase “multi-million pound abortion industry”. It is nothing of the sort. The largest provider of abortions to the NHS (and it’s only one service they provide) may have an income of £25 million, but it is not all profit, as Dorries implies…

For 2009-10, the standard NHS tariff for abortions ranged from £502 for a medical abortion to £649 for a ‘D&E’ (surgical dilation and extraction). Had BPAS done nothing else that year but carry out medical abortions for the NHS at its standard tariff then, with 93% (51500) of its clients having their treatment paid for by the state, it would have generated an income of £25.85 million from the NHS.

This would be £840,000 more than its actual income for the year. Far from making ‘vast amounts of money’ it seems that BPAS actually provides the NHS with a range of cost effective services at less the NHS’s own internal tariffs.

So on all three counts, choice, evidence of mental health issues and of an abortion industry positively rolling in profits, Dorries is wrong, wrong, wrong.

1. Choice: Women already know what the choices are when it comes to unwanted prgnancy.
2. Mental health: There is no conclusive proof that women that have abortions are more likely to have mental health issues in the future as a result that women that carry through to term.
3. The implication that people are getting filthy rich on the back of all these abortion is a fallacy.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, pretty much sums up the Honorable Member for Mid Bedforshire.

(via Martin Robbins)

Update: For a thorough fisking of Nadines article see Unitys’ post at the Ministry of Truth.

Part of the series: The Great Travel-Sickness Experiment

The Trip: Abingdon to Newcastle-under-Lyme
Time: approx 2.5 hrs
Miles: approx 125

After having a wierd result from my last trip, the results for my latest experimetation with the accupressure bands is pretty straight forward – no travel sickness at all. None. Nothing.

The only other thing to report is that when I first put a band on my right wrist I must’ve got it in the wrong place, but quickly re-adjusted it as I felt a sharp pain, like a trapped nerve, from my thumb to the inside of my elbow. It disappeared just as quickly when the little button was moved slightly. Apart from that, everything went swimmingly.

So kids, be careful, even homeopathic accupuncture can hurt too.

Result: it’s a good result for the accupressure bands, but not such a good result for ‘Big Pharma’ as my lad, on some Traveleze tablets, puked all over the back of the car after about 2 hours into the journey.

Testing to be continued.

Part of the series: The Great Travel-Sickness Experiment

Finally, a month and a half or so after getting my magic wristbands that are supposed to cure me of travel sickness in our Mazda 5, we went on a trip long enough to give them a proper road test.

The trip: Abingdon to Luton
Time: approx 1.25 hrs
Miles: approx 77

After a bit of messing about with the kids I got the wristbands on after about a mile and a half after we set off. I was already starting to feel a little icky by then and this time felt I didn’t have any problems finding the described place to put them, three finger widths up from the first crease of your wrist, in between the two tendons, unlike the last time I put them on when I couldn’t find two tendons.

The travel sickness feeling didn’t disappear all of a sudden, as I expected it wouldn’t, but slowly morphed into other sensations. By about half way through the journey I realised that I wasn’t feeling sick in the usual way, but urge to nod off was quite strong. It was easy enough to keep my eyes open when looking at road signs or looking at stuff the kids were pointing out, but when there was a lull the natural thing to do was put my head back and close my eyes. There was another sensation as well.

This second sensation started a bit earlier than when I realised I wasn’t actually feeling nauseous and it was while I was thinking about this second sensation that made me notice my steadied guts.

You know when you’re upside down, hanging upside down by your legs from a climbing frame or when you’re laid on the sofa with you feet on the wall and your head dangling just above the floor? Or even when you not quite upside down, maybe laid head-down on the stairs whilst talking face to face with a 3 year old who’s laid head-up on the stairs? After while you head starts to fill with blood. You can feel pressure inside your skull and your eyesballs start to feel like they’re being squeezed. It’s not really a nice feeling at all. That is the sensation I had, but only the eye-ball squeezing part, which I thought was quite weird and completely unexpected.

I can’t quite fit a link between the eye-ball pressure and the pressure of two little nylon buttons pressing on my wrist but I’ve not experienced that pressure in my eyes without being upside down. How can they be connected? Are there veins connected from wrists directly to ones’ eyes?

So in conclusion, whilst wearing the wristbands the need to doze off remained and the nausea was replaced with pressure in the eyes.

Result: inconclusive. More testing required.

I have a trip up to Stoke soon, so we’ll see what happens then.

Part of the series: The Great Travel-Sickness Experiment

I tried my new wristbands today.

It’s was only a short journey of about 9 miles each way. I only had mild motion sickness, but I think that was due to the short journey rather than the wristbands.

They are quite tight on the wrist and even after only 10-15 minutes of wearing there was quite a mark left around my arms, the sort you get round your leg when your sock are too tight, and I wondered if the mark where the nylon bobble was, was actually going to leave a bruise. After 10 minutes or so the marks had disappeared.

When I put the bands on, they felt very tight, as I mentioned previously, and I thought it would annoy and start to itch and stuff, but they didn’t. I think they could on a long journey, though.

Getting the bands in the correct position may be a struggle and will need a bit of trial and error to get right.
You’re supposed to have the bobble three finger widths up your arm from the first wrist crease, and then in between the the tendons. The distance up from my wrist is fairly obvious, but I can only find one tendon. I don’t know if I’m a freak with just one tendon, although everything seems to work ok, it’s hidden behind other stuff or I just don’t know what I’m looking for, but I could only find one.

I think that may be the biggest stumbling block to getting the bands to work correctly, if they do indeed work, is the positioning of them. They need to be in a certain position and you’re trying to get an untrained person to get them in the right place with a basic diagram and short description.

Well, that’s my initial thoughts on them: comfy enough on short distances, not sure if they’re postioned correctly, but they didn’t work. I am not put off though, in my quest to have my head screwed by a cheap bit of woo I shall carry on and try them on a longer journey. Although when that’ll be, I don’t know yet.

I have never been troubled by travel sickness. Well, I may have puked in the car on the way to Skegness when I was five years old, but if I did i) i can’t remember it and ii) who hasn’t?

I’m fine in aeroplanes, even better when I’ve had a few beers. I’m good in cars, I’m not troubled by trains and when everyone is emptying their guts out the wrong end on a ferry, I’m out on deck laughing as the waves crash over the side of the boat.

That is until we bought our latest car.

That car is a Mazda 5. It’s a great car. It seats more than five people. It goes quite well, has loads of cubby holes for storing stuff, has six gears so cruising at 70mph is at about 2k rpm and the bit the kids love the best: sliding rear doors.

The problem I have with it is that everytime I’m a passenger, in the front or back, I need to puke. Or sleep. Or puke then sleep.

How do I know it’s the car that’s the problem? Well, as I mentioned at the start of this post I have never suffered travel sickness before. I have never suffered it previously on any other form of transport, in any vehicle with any driver. The closest I’ve come to it is a condition of the inner ear called ‘benign paroxysmal positional vertigo‘. This involved getting out of bed and instead of walking down the bed to the end of the room, I walked diagonally across the room and nearly through the window. I felt sick just bending over to put my socks on.

Now. I could resort to travel sickness tablets, which I have been using. They work, too. Presumably they contain the same substance doctors give you before a general anaesthetic to stop you puking whilst unconscious flat out on your back. The trouble with that is that travel sickness pills ain’t cheap and the cost soon adds up. I’m looking for an alternative.

I’m gonna give these babies a go…

(the one on the left is inside out)

The blurb on back of box says…

Using the ancient Chinese principles of acupressure, many people find wearing the bands on both wrists can help control nausea including all forms of motion sickness.

Acupressure is believed to work by restoring the balance of negative (Yin) and positive (Yan) ions in the body as imbalances are believed to affect health.

What do you reckon? Will they work? Yin and Yan? Acupressure? They’ve been known about for centuries. Of course they work.

Don’t they?

Boots, whose own brand product this is but made by Sea-Band, don’t seem quite so sure. No mention of trials or percentages of people that find these work. Using words like ‘believe’ in the blurb, too. Using “many people believe” is the same as “lots of unqualified peoples’ opinion”.

Not being an actual scientist chap I could be wrong, but I didn’t realise that Yin and Yan were ions. I thought that ions were ions. After a quick look at the all-knowing Wikipedia, there is in fact positive and negative ions, but they’re not called Yin and Yan and whether they are positive or negative ions depends on how many electrons they have compared to how many protons.

So, if I follow these directions…

A band must be worn on each wrist with the button placed over the Nei Kuan point.

To find this point place your middle three fingers on the inside of each wrist with the edge of the third finger on the first wrist crease.

The correct point is just under the edge of your index finger and between the two central tendons. Position the button face downwards over the Nei Kuan point.
Can be worn while sleeping.

These elasticated bands with a nylon nobble on them will alter how many electrons my ions have and bring me back to balance and stop my travel sickness in our Mazda 5.

I’m not so sure it’s gonna work. But for a one-time payment of £7.99, I’ll give it a go. I’m willing to have my skeptic head turned inside out with a result that may not be quite what I expect.

I’ll keep you updated.

*if you have any other suggestions, apart from those rubber things that you dangle from the back of the car, then let me know in the comments

For the record:

Fibre content:
Acrylic: 64.2%
Nylon: 24.2%
Elastane: 11.6%

People should stop calling heroin users “junkies” or “addicts”, an influential think tank on drugs has said.

The UK Drug Policy Commission said such names stigmatised users and made it more difficult to get off drugs.

…says a page on the BBC website.

What a crock of shit.

Heroin users are called ‘junkies’ because heroin is also called Junk – by drug users. Junkies are also called ‘addicts’ because they are addicted to a substance.

Authors of the six-month report said the terms “junkie” and “addict” were distrustful and judgmental and led to feelings of low self-worth among drug users.

The feelings of low self-worth are caused by the drug. Any term used to describe a junkieis going to have negative connatations because of how junkies behave.

They said these hostile attitudes only added to the stigma of drug addiction and made it harder for users to give up.

I would argue that these hostile attitudes also prevent a fair number of people from taking heroin in the first place.

Colin Blakemore of Oxford University, one of the report’s authors, told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme drug addicts faced stigma “as damaging as similar attitudes to gay people, and people with mental health issues, were 30 years ago”.

And that’s a bad thing how? There may be many factors determining whether someone take drugs or not, but the ultimate responsibility lies with the individual. It is a choice. People don’t choose to be gay, and you’d have to be mantal to actually want a mental health issue of any sort. Gay and people with mental health problems don’t have to spunk a great wodge of cash they don’t have on being gay or being er, mental. They can be for free.

He added that hostility towards drug addicts failed to recognise how difficult it was for them to quit, describing what they faced as “chemical bondage”.

No it doesn’t. It recognises that the vast majority of mainliners are untrustworthy to some degree or other. Don’t give an addict an ultimatum between you and the drugs. The drugs will win.

“The crux of this problem, I’m afraid, is the persistent view that drug addiction is the problem of the addict,” he said.

For fucks sake. Who’s fucking problem is it then, if it’s not the addicts’ problem? Society at large, I suppose.

I’m all for liberalising drug laws and spending money rehab rather than prison, treating drug addiction from a public heath direction rather than criminal, but lets not remove responsibility from the user for getting hooked in the first place or try and hide what a fucking awful life being a heroin addict is.

N.B.
Yes, I know there are always exceptions to the dirty skank junkie, and prostitues that get hooked because of their pimps etc.

From xkcd…

I like the title text too…

Dear Editor of Homeopathy Monthly:
I have two small corrections to your July issue. One, it’s spelled “echinacea”, and two, homeopathic medecines are no better than placebos and your entire magazine is a sham.

The Daily Mail reports that…

Fathers who are involved during pregnancy could help reduce the risk of infant mortality during their child’s first year of life, a new study says

First the obvious. As always with this kind of reporting and/or study, how does the baby know that the father is involved and not an imposter pretending to be the father? Does it reduce the risk of infant mortality if it is an imposter?

What level of involvement would bring about this reduction in risk of infant mortality?

Father involvement was defined by the presence of the father’s name on the infant’s birth certificate. While this measure does not assess how much the father was around during pregnancy, other studies have established that a father named on the record was likely to have been involved to some extent before the birth.

Huh? A scribble of ink on a piece of paper is all that is needed? Oh if only it was that easy.

So this study just looked to see if there was a name on a birth certificate and because other studies found that this meant the father was ‘likely’ to be involved, came to the conclusion that a fathers involvement in pregnancy reduces the risk of infant mortality. Hmm. Highly scientific, then.

Dr Alio said paternal support could decrease the mother’s emotional stress, which has been linked to poor pregnancy outcomes.
Fathers-to-be could also encourage mothers to live a more healthy lifestyle. The study found women with absent partners were more likely to smoke during pregnancy and get inadequate prenatal care.

It’s fathers that help remember. Not partners, same sex or otherwise, or having a big bank account, or which country or area of a country that helps. Fathers do. Woo hoo! Aren’t fathers special, eh?

Junk science from a junk paper.

What’s with this ad?

Lets celebrate everything that human race have acheived. The extra-ordinary world that we have created that is so far from the trees and caves from whence we came.

You can do that at 8.30pm 27th March with the Human Achievement Hour.

During Human Achievement Hour, people around the world will be recognising the incredible accomplishments of the human race.

Originally conceived by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2009, Human Achievement Hour coincides with the earth hour campaign but salutes those who keep the lights on and produce the energy that makes human achievement possible.

Damn. It coincides with Earth Hour. I’m sure there’s a good reason the exact same hour was chosen. Gotta choose which to do then. Decisions, decisions. They’re both important things, really aren’t they? We got to look after the planet. Whether man made climate change is real or not, we don’t don’t want to mess our home up. You wouldn’t shit on your living room carpet, would you? Would you?

On the other hand, look what humans have acheived. flight, wireless communications, men walking on the moon. We truly are an incredible animal. That surely deserves our support.

I’m gonna go with the Human achievement hour. Let’s celebrate people for a change. We are down on ourselves a lot recently, a big pat on the back would do us good. What have I gotta do to praise the demi-god (and compared to mere animals, we are gods) that is the human?

Millions of people around the world will be showing their support for human achievement by simply going about their daily lives. While earth hour activists will be left in the dark, Human Achievement Hour participants will be going to the cinema, enjoying a hot meal, driving their car or watching television.

What? But I simply ‘go about my daily life’ er, daily. Does that mean that even if I didn’t know about this hour I would still be celebrating it?
Surely then, I celebrate with a human achievement hour 8736 times a year?

This isn’t a celebration. It’s a…

Now, where’s my lentil meusli…?