Posts by James Green
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Richard Emerson.
Mmmmmm Emersons. -
Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.
Perhaps it is because placebos are getting more expensive. And everyone knows that more expensive placebos work better than cheap placebos...
But seriously, although price appears to be one determinant of the size of the placebo effect, if people think they are on some new miracle drug, it seems reasonable to assume that that might have a similar effect.
-
Not having a religion or opinion is surely part of freedom of thought and belief?
Other corollaries seem more explicitly outlined. The right to not be deprived of life v. the right to refuse medical treatment. The freedom of movement explicitly defines the right not to move. -
It just really goes without saying
That seems a strangely weak argument from a lawyer. I thought you might have pointed to precedent or common law. Instead, you're telling me that it's the vibe?
You'd better get the keys to the Camira so you can move the Torana so that you can get the Commodore VS(M) out of the driveway.not least because the Bill of Rights also doesn't explicitly recognise a right to freedom from religion
So I obviously have no legal training, but umm, isn't that covered in the bit where it says "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference"
-
Are bodycorps also a fundamental breach of human rights as well?
And, inadvertently, we're back to the argument about whether a person should be free to leave a university, because universities are themselves bodies corporate.
-
Reconstituting students' associations into a different role, is, unfortunately, as problematic as making them compulsory.
I was thinking more along the lines of making them into a straight governance body. In some respects similar to what happened to most of the health professions a few years back. The compulsory membership associations and societies were advocates, service providers, and also involved in the governance of the profession. The statutory/governance role was split out, leaving the other as a voluntary professional organisation. In the context of a university, this could leave a student council, democratically elected to provide governance etc. (possibly some services), and then the advocacy bit is separate and voluntary.
In unrelated news, I'm interested that the New Zealand Bill of Rights it simply says "Everyone has the right to freedom of association". In some expositions of freedom of association, it is simply that a person is not limited with whom they associate with; in others there is also a freedom to not associate. Given that the Bill of Rights is entirely silent on that, where is the source of the freedom to not associate?
-
clinical trail=RCT (which has been covered enough I think). There is also a difference between saying that treatment at the hospital (in aggregate) was based on evidence and best practice, and potentially what Green did.
While Mantell worked in O&G, cervical cancer was not his research area. It is Jones' research area, but to be clear, he was a co-author on the Lancet Oncology paper with Charlotte Paul upthread. I do find it interesting in light of Bryder's argument that Green was saving women from hysterectomy that Jones puts a date on the switch from hysterectomy to cone biopsy.
-
Oh, and another point on governance/representation. Until sometime in the early 00s, postgraduate students were not members of the Otago association. I'm not sure exactly how it went down, but now postgraduates are members of OUSA so that they can elect someone to represent them on all of the postgraduate committees &c.
-
I'm not convinced in Graeme's writing off of an local govt comparison. After all, the average taxpayer sends their "serious cash" to central government, but that doesn't make local government optional. In fact, the analogy seems to work quite well -- Students associations and local government both suffer from poor turnout, and money is spent in a fashion that does not always please their constituents. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if many VSM proponents are also small (local) government proponents.
The idea of equating students' associations with ratepayers or shareholders associations also seems rather tenuous. Perhaps we should accept this argument after Graeme successfully has Bruce Sheppard or his nominee appointed to all NZX-listed company boards.
More seriously, I think the discussion is really around the scope of activities conducted by students' associations, in the same way there is discussion around the scope of local (and central) government activities. Students associations do play a governance role in their institutions. Perhaps a more appropriate solution would be to reconstitute them in that light.
-
@Tom -- I mixed the data from last year's general election into the mix, and plotted relative turnouts. The low turn out electorates are, to an electorate, the usual suspects. I was just too lazy, and photobucket was being a bitch.