Kidney Punch

The effect of cannabis legalisation on Emergency Care 

John Pickering • Feb 27, 2016

• Health and Medicine,
• Science and Society

Medical cannabis application guidelines are to be reviewed, announced Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne this week. Co-incidently a paper was published* in the Annals of Emergency Medicine on the effect on Emergency Care of legalising medical marijuana use in Colorado. Alas, this article is behind a paywall.  It does not have a lot of detail. However, it is relevant to the … Read More

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What’s going on at the UOC?

John Pickering • Feb 09, 2016

• epidemics,
• heart disease,
• Mars,
• NASA,
• Pacifika,
• University of Otago Christchurch

Q. What has Mars, Epidemics, Heart Disease, Infection, and Pacifika got in common? A. They are all central to research project at the University of Otago Christchurch (UOC). Here are some excerpts for the UOC summer newsletter (Written by UOC communications manager, Kim Thomas). Christchurch in NASA Mars project role University of Otago, Christchurch, researchers are playing a crucial role … Read More

The physics of maiming a child (repost because of another close encounter)

John Pickering • Feb 03, 2016

• Driveway,
• Health and Medicine,
• physics,
• Science

Dear Driver, When you backed out of a driveway and did not even see how I swerved around behind your car to avoid T-boning you, how dare you have the temerity to tell me you were careful!  I was 7 feet tall, dressed in bright yellow and traveling at no more than 10 km/h.  Perhaps a simple lesson in physics … Read More

Self plagiarism – a misnomer

John Pickering • Jan 10, 2016

• academic,
• Jamie Whyte,
• NZ Herald,
• Plagiarism,
• publication,
• Science and Society

The story so far… Dr Jaimie Whyte publishes in the NZ Herald an article that portions of which are substantially similar to an article he published in Britain in 2005.  This was picked up somehow by @LI_politico who posted: Jamie Whyte 2005 v 2016. He literally copied a previous thing he wrote about Britain. Really … Read More

Toms River

John Pickering • Nov 10, 2015

• Health and Medicine,
• Science and Society

Toms River is a mystery. Not a mystery about the missing apostrophe, though that does warrant a thorough investigation. Rather, Toms River is a forensic mystery, an intrigue of science and health, of the marvels of chemical manufacturer and of the mischievousness of chemical pollution, and finally of that old conundrum of correlation verse causation. The writing flows like that … Read More

Christchurch Hospital’s latest study: IDENTAKIT-HF

John Pickering • Oct 13, 2015

• Health and Medicine

If it weren’t for your kidney’s, where would you be? You’d be in the hospital or infirmary (with apologies to Fred Dagg). The heart and kidneys are not just linked by a pipe, but the health of one is very much dependent on the health of the other. Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) is a phenomenon whereby there is a … Read More

DIY bowel screening kits

John Pickering • Aug 17, 2015

• Beat Bowel Cancer Aotearoa,
• Bowel Cancer,
• Faecal Occult Blood Test,
• False Negative,
• False Positive,
• Ministry of Health,
• sensitivity,
• Specificity

The Press headlines this morning claim the Ministry of Health is blocking bowel screening tests. The article itself states the MoH does “not recommend” use of do-it-yourself bowel screening kits.  I can find no MoH press release relating to these kits, so I am a little confused as to whether or not the MoH is blocking anything […] … Read More

Two minds about funding heart research

John Pickering • Aug 14, 2015

• Canterbury Medical Research Foundation,
• Charities,
• Christchurch Heart Institute,
• grants,
• Heart Attack,
• Heart Foundation of New Zealand

Recently I had a knock on the door from an enthusiastic young man talking about heart research. Given that has been the focus of my research for the last 18 months or so I was delighted that someone was out there trying to raise money for research. However, my delight was, in retrospect,was tempered somewhat […] … Read More

The transplant smile

John Pickering • Aug 05, 2015

• $100Dialysis

“His mega-watt smile could power the Auckland grid” was how Herald columnist Wynne Gray so eloquently described this morning Joeli Vidiri after his kidney transplant.  In the meantime across the Tasman my long term colleague and head of Nephrology at Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, Prof Zoltan Endre, is celebrating 50 years of the […] … Read More

Let the children take us to space

John Pickering • Jul 14, 2015

• children,
• Fun,
• NZS1,
• rocket,
• rocketlab,
• satillite,
• vision

44 years ago a feather and a hammer were dropped at the same time on the moon by Commander David Scott of Apollo 15. An experiment that continues to cause wonder and inspire children today. Indeed, it may well have been an experiment children would have dreamed up for the astronauts to do. This post is simply to […] … Read More