Www.bmj.comFhttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/syndrome/ Gulf war syndromehas been inside the news again this week together with the publication of Professor Simon Wessely and colleagues’ papers in last week’s Lancet (pp 169-78, 179-82). Frontline has setup an appealing and nicely developed internet site that supplies a web based account of their television documentary Last Battle on the Gulf War. These of you having a RealPlayer and enough memory can download the audiocast on the programme. Scientific panels inside the United states have concluded that illnesses associated towards the Gulf war are caused by combat strain. Veterans blame their symptoms on a variety of agents, from vaccines to depleted uranium, and are suspicious that there has been a cover up. After so much sensationalism in the media, in particular online, it is actually encouraging to locate this web-site presenting a effectively balanced debate–perhaps there is a future for responsible reporting in cyberspace. There are some fascinating hyperlinks: the connection to a CIA report about chemical weapons is specifically exotic. You’ll find a massive quantity of web sites devoted to Gulf war syndrome, and, sadly, misinformation is rife. Intense groups have posted conspiracy theories over a large number of pages–and, judging by the amount of related books and videos for sale, they are producing loads of money by peddling crackpot concepts. Any individual wanting an example of a few of these paranoid fantasies could attempt Captain Joyce Riley’s site at http://www.all-natural.com/riley.html. His ten 000 word essay attributes Gulf war syndrome to sinister biological experiments carried out by the US government. Mind you, he also believes that the motive behind operation “Desert Storm” was to retrieve alien artefacts buried inside the Iraqi desert.Web-site In the WEEKRichard Harling rharling@ bmj.comreviewsProfessor Chris Ham, director of your Health Services Management Centre at the University of Birmingham, says he mostly reads the Guardian and Independent. “What I’ve been seeing in these papers seems to me very fair. It is a bit superficial, but you’d anticipate that.” A crisis, then Properly, not truly. “It’s been far more challenging this year than in some earlier years. It’s not only income, it is much more basic. You will discover shortages of employees in some places, and there’s really small slack within the method. So to that extent you could say that some parts from the NHS have already been in crisis. The way I’d put it, using healthcare terminology, is that we’ve got an acute on best of a chronic issue, and what the papers choose up on is the acute trouble.” And do not they just. Flu has had probably the most coverage. The Times of five January provided a entire web page of science, epidemiology, and property remedies. The London Evening Normal of your similar day was certainly one of many papers reporting that “Flu victims are placing London’s well being service beneath unprecedented strain by dialling 999 and asking to be rushed to hospital.” Meningitis place in an appearance (“Just how quite a few much more need to die” demanded the Express on 6 January), but shortages in intensive care beds quickly displaced it as the challenge in the moment. Quickly by far the most grotesque story was the affair with the hospital morgue within a freezer lorry: “A CRISIS-HIT hospital has hired a refrigerated truck as an overflow MORTUARY,” reported the PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19996636 Every day Star on six January. For the Royal HDAC-IN-3 College of Nursing, Christine Hancock got swiftly for the point as she saw it. “A fantastic spend rise would increase numbers instantly,” she assured the Guardian of 12 January. You can not blame.