Man’s best friend has been his companion for over 15,000 years. Dogs made such excellent hunters that it was likely that they saved their owners from serious injury when facing wild beasts but also excelling in warning of danger. In recent times their roles have evolved from hunting to helping the disabled and the mentally ill. It is now proposed that they can warn epileptics of seizures or sniff out gluten if the owner is intolerant. Have we come to expect too much from our animal companions?

The knight is on the way to his death and on the way a demon mocks him. Queensland Health has lost to follow-up hundreds of patients with Xray results showing serious illness including cancer. Patients are followed up by the health department sometimes over years when serious illness is diagnosed but too often they are lost in an over-large bloated system with more bureaucrats than clinicians until finally they are located too late to have treatment. The frequent tests but failure to treat turns the Health department into a demon that taunts but provides no relief.

Right from prehistory people have undertaken elaborate embalming rituals in the hope that some future paradise will wake them to live again. The Frankenstein monster of Mary Shelly and the 1931 film staring Boris Karloff is the merely the scientific reimagining of this hope. The attempts to grow brain cells in dishes and to deep freeze dead millionaires along with the dream of putting our consciousness into robots all forms part of the Frankenstein delusion.

While children play video games, rubbish piles up around them, in their school yards and in their rooms. Society, their parents and their schools are unable to make them take responsibility for their environment. The young were once thought to be the strongest proponents of environmental change now seem not to care less. This article paints the sad portrait of Steven, a gamer, estranged from his family, who spends his nights playing computer games as rubbish builds up around him.

The armies of the French perfected the concept of Triage, the process in which wounded and sick soldiers are allocated priority according to their injuries. This system requires that the most senior medical officer sees the casualty in the first instance so that the most effective treatment or investigation can be instituted in the shortest possible time. Civilian hospitals use the term triage to refer to what happens when patients arrive in casualty but instead clerks and juniour staff process the sick while ambulances build up on the hospital ramps and patients die inside them.

"Cesarean section, also known as a C-section, is a surgical procedure for childbirth that has become increasingly common in recent years. While the possibility of surgical birth has existed for roughly the past century, advancements in modern medicine, including safe and effective surgical techniques and pain management options like epidural anesthesia, have transformed it from a last resort. The rising prevalence of Cesarean delivery in many regions has led to discussions about its impact on natural birth rates and the potential for de-skilling in childbirth practices, sometimes with serious complications."

James Joyce is hailed as one of the greatest authors who have written in the English language and yet his works, especially the latter ones, are so dense and full of word play that they are indecipherable. Joyce and his family were troubled with serious mental illness, so does the obscurity of his work indicate brilliance or insanity?

This painting by Rembrandt of the biblical wife of King David shows strange markings on the left breast. These could be the outward sign of breast cancer in this model. If these signs are of breast cancer it is the first known portrayal of that disease in classical art or anywhere. It is now known to be a disease of lifestyle.

The tragic death of the physician and media star Michael Mosely appears to make no sense in someone who devoted all his work to prolonging life. Mosely suffered from Diabetes and followed a tradition of doctors experimenting on themselves in order to prove a medical discovery but appears to have forgotten that pushing himself might have fatal consequences.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is on track to be the most costly, rorted, over-budget scheme in Australian history. Costing more than defence and Medicare, this scheme has no cap and no means testing. Millionaires get their driveways repaved, carers and relatives go on luxury cruises and now serial killers and rapists incarcerated for years are released onto NDIS packages worth millions.

The eminent psychiatrist, Theodore Dalrymple, reveals the problem at the heart of modern psychology. It turns its patients into objects entirely at the mercy of forces they cannot control, making them do bad things.

Mobile phones and handheld devices have rapidly but insidiously found their way into our lives, into our houses, and our bedrooms. The disturbing thing is that they have completely captured our children who are unable to do without them and at the same time are harmed by them. They have become the new windows into a corrupt and terrifying world where our over-stimulated, overactive children forsake reading and no longer think for themselves.

The proposed fleet of nuclear submarines that will be purchased by Australia will bankrupt the nation. We do not have and will never have enough sailors to man the crews of these highly sophisticated vessels. We have a history of joining our bellicose allies in all sorts of conflicts. Even if these submarines could be built we will never be in a position to power or maintain them.

Wisdom and knowledge are now in short supply because low literacy in middle school, over-reliance on the internet, and lack of reading among college graduates have created a generation who know nothing about the world. Medical scholars are expected to be learned people but medical students when asked simple general knowledge questions outside their field are unable to answer them.

Ordinary people, as well as psychologists and teachers, are confused about mental symptoms and tend to consider marked variations in behaviour and disturbance of conduct indications for the presence of mental illness, especially in children. This is driven by the internet and the DSM-5, an American catalogue of diagnoses. The most common overused diagnosis is Attention Deficit Disorder or ADHD, but there is no scientific criteria for the diagnosis of this condition or scientific basis to support the use of dangerous stimulants to treat children diagnosed with it.

The Royal Commission into Veterans Suicide grinds on, so far without much to show except for a set of incomprehensible, preliminary recommendations. Royal Commissions into mental health and health matters in this country have a bad record, often making things worse. For this Commission, the usual players from the “mental health industry” will step forward, seeking even more funding for their expensive programs, despite the abysmal record of psychiatrists and psychologists in reducing the rate of suicide in veterans. A much better approach is discussed within.

Ten years of promises by the Government and police to end youth crime have ended in the sad spectacle of police cars being chased into their police stations to escape youth offenders in stolen vehicles. Youth offending begins in schools. In dealing with behaviour in schools, children are more likely to be given drugs than discipline.

In every place where people live together, a constant conflict is acted out which is best described as the Pet Wars. Humans make the mistake of believing that animals think like they do but animals are unpredictable especially wild ones. The beloved pet of one owner will attack and even kill the pet or child of another or even, tragically, the child of the owner of the dog. This post explores this conflict in detail.

Giving patients with severe mental problems like Posttraumatic Stress Disorder hallucinogenic drugs like Psilocybin has long been discredited but now doctors have been permitted to resume the practice.

Cyclone Tracy destroyed Darwin and killed 71 people, Vandalism and violence will destroy the city again.