A paper in the New England Journal of Medicine outlines the results of a scheme to pay people to quit smoking, and what Dalrymple finds most interesting is what it did not say:

…it treated a monetary bribe as morally unproblematic, in precisely the same way as it would have treated a pill or a potion, that is to say as if smoking [were] straightforwardly a disease and money were a straightforwardly pharmacological agent. And it seems to me obvious that if the authors had offered, say, $1 million instead of $800, the results would have been very different. As a bribe to people with a median household income of $60,000, $800 seems to me pathetically, homoeopathically, even insultingly, little. The authors evidently need further training in the art of bribery, perhaps in Nigeria or Albania. Certainly, further studies with different sizes of bribes to smokers are needed.

This piece at the Library of Law and Liberty is a nuanced take on the mass immigration from impoverished countries currently being experienced by most of the West. Dalrymple explores the difficult connection between one’s personal experience and public policy. After a touching description of the immigrants who care for his mother-in-law (“they are extremely good people, whose warmth, kindness, humanity and mannerliness were obvious on first acquaintance”), he nevertheless wonders whether such immigration is justified, and acknowledges that the answer to the one question does not necessarily provide the answer to the other:

1. I sympathize personally with the immigrants;
2. I like the majority of those whom I have met;
3. I recognize that, along with many others, I benefit from their presence, though I do not know precisely what the size of that presence ought to be;
4. I do not know what their overall economic effect is;
5. I do not want to see my society changed irreversibly by their uncontrolled influx.

The study described here seems to have particular relevance to the US, given the runaway rate of prescription of opioids, and the overdoses therefrom:

On another occasion a patient, a heroin addict, accused me of murdering him because I would not prescribe diazepam for him. In actual fact, I believed that precisely the opposite was almost the case: that if I prescribed for him what he wanted, his chances of dying by overdose, intentionally or unintentionally, would be much increased.

A paper in a recent edition of the British Medical Journal suggests that I was right.

What is the end goal of those who wished to see Timothy Hunt forced to resign for having spoken a few innocuous words regarding coed laboratories?

The ultimate aim, of course, is that of Newspeak as described in Nineteen Eighty-Four: that certain things should not only be unsayable but unthinkable. No doubt those who formed the lynch mob that forced Professor Hunt’s resignation (thanks to the terminal pusillanimity of the university administration) would not much care for a parallel with the Kouachi brothers, who carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo, and it is true that they did not actually kill the professor; but their desire to ensure that certain things not be said was the same as the murderers’, and their method of fulfilling their desire differed from that of the Kouachi brothers mainly in the sophistication of the means employed.

In a supposedly rational age, why do so many people still avail themselves of so-called alternative medical treatments that have a success rate of essentially zero? Dalrymple first notes that most alternative medicine is an addition to, rather than in replacement of, the orthodox kind, and he identifies many possible reasons for its use, including this one:

…alternative medicine seems warmer and friendlier. Alternative practitioners seem to have more time to devote to their patients than the orthodox. Moreover, the theories on which they work imply a mystery if not the mystical: there are [more] things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, doctor, especially where I am concerned. My case is special, not just a run-of-the-mill case of disease x, y, or z. Alternative medicine is perfectly adapted to an age of neo-paganism, to the needs of people who claim to be spiritual but not religious.

This piece at Psychology Today is a nice summary of much of Dalrymple’s clinical work, as the opening lines make clear:

Perhaps the greatest of modern epidemics in western society is that of self-infliction. Never before in history have so many people made themselves so miserable by their actions, opinions, habits, tastes and proclivities. On all previous ages, circumstances were so difficult or dangerous for most people that no helping hand was needed for misery to triumph. This is the first age in which people can choose the kind of misery they want: previously it was the privilege of the rich to do so.

Read the rest here

In the wake of the campaign against Sir Timothy Hunt for his remarks to the effect that women cry more than men when criticized, Dalrymple discovers an even more vicious statement, a SHOCKING! effusion of pure, unalloyed misogynist hatred from the newly-elected mayor of Madrid:

Manuela Carmena, who apparently was somewhat reluctant to stand for office, reportedly said that she hoped to bring to politics ‘the values of feminine culture: emotion, empathy, dialogue and listening.’

Now some people might think that this bears a faint resemblance to the kind of thing that Sir Timothy was saying; as indeed on any reasonable understanding it does. Surely emotion has some relation to crying? This being the case, what should we do about the new mayor’s terrible retrograde [and] deeply sexist utterance?