https://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2020/04/08/of-covid-and-condoms/ Wed, 08 Apr 2020 14:40:42 +0000 https://www.wisdomofwhores.com/?p=4402 OK, it’s been ten thousand years since I’ve posted on The Wisdom site; I apologise for the long silence, which is explained by my being AWOL doing other things. For a while, I went totally off topic, spent a year on tramp steamers, and wrote a book about Indonesia. For the last four or five […]

The post Of COVID and condoms first appeared on The Wisdom of Whores.]]> https://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2016/06/19/sex-in-the-sewers-paris-in-summer/ Sun, 19 Jun 2016 21:18:13 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/?p=4258 Most people spend long summer evenings in Paris strolling arm in arm around the boulevards, sitting in cafes or lolling in parks. I spent this weekend in the sewers. Am I odd in finding drains a sexy subject? Perhaps. But they’re my number one candidate for a Song of Contagion. I’m lobbying for a diarrhoea […]

The post Sex in the sewers: Paris in summer first appeared on The Wisdom of Whores.]]> https://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2016/04/22/po-faced-presentations-dont-change-thinking/ Fri, 22 Apr 2016 08:30:08 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/?p=4249 I’ve just emerged from three days buried in a bunker at the Geneva Health Forum, which focuses on health in lower income countries. There was a great cartoonist, but otherwise it was all quite po-faced: power-point presentations, incomprehensible posters and much thanking of sponsors. LOTS of rather earnest, mostly white people suffered from the Public […]

The post Po-faced presentations don’t change thinking first appeared on The Wisdom of Whores.]]> https://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2016/04/07/world-health-day-healthy-for-lobbyists/ Thu, 07 Apr 2016 09:23:51 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/?p=4237 Today is World Health Day. Judging from what’s in the Song of Contagion Twitter stream (@songfocontagion), this is above all an opportunity for a lot of lobbyists and marketing specialists to promote their specific cause. Greenpeace has been quite active, because of course you can always make a health issue out of the environment. There’s […]

The post World Health Day: healthy for lobbyists first appeared on The Wisdom of Whores.]]> https://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2016/04/03/madness-in-music/ Sun, 03 Apr 2016 11:53:27 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/?p=4229 Yesterday, during a visit to the thought-provoking Museum of the Mind, on the premises of the Bethlem hospital (still active but now renamed), I was reminded both how far we have come in the treatment of mental illness since the ‘Bedlam madhouse’ was first opened, and how far there is still to go. At the […]

The post Madness in music first appeared on The Wisdom of Whores.]]> https://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2016/03/30/if-hiv-were-music-would-it-be-loud-and-screechy/ Wed, 30 Mar 2016 13:33:44 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/?p=4218 As subscribers know, I’ve more or less dropped off the HIV map in recent years. That’s in part because there are so many other interesting health conditions out there to think about. And that keeps me thinking about why some conditions are more fashionable than others, why some things that affect very few people (such […]

The post If HIV were music, would it be loud and screechy? first appeared on The Wisdom of Whores.]]> https://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2016/02/01/bad-medicine-is-not-better-than-no-medicine/ Mon, 01 Feb 2016 13:29:49 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/?p=4205 Adult Intensive care ward at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Ho Chi Minh City, ©Chau Doan/Getty Images Recently, I have spent a good deal of time working on the issue of anti-microbial resistance. I was set on this path by the discovery, nearly a decade ago now, that the drugs we were using to treat […]

The post Bad medicine is NOT better than no medicine first appeared on The Wisdom of Whores.]]> https://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2014/02/03/warning-htmlspecialchars-charset-utf-7-not-supported-assuming-utf-8-in-homewisd0960public_htmlwp-includesformatting-php-on-line-3019bbc_welcomes_year_of_whores/ Mon, 03 Feb 2014 15:51:06 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/?p=4156 Last week I found myself at the House of Lords in London, discussing what the BBC World Service means to the world. The World Service stands for accuracy in reporting, a lot of very clever people said, it represents fairness and impartiality, it tells it like it is. So I was thrilled to see that […]

The post A good year for Whores, say the BBC and I first appeared on The Wisdom of Whores.]]> https://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2014/01/16/warning-htmlspecialchars-charset-utf-7-not-supported-assuming-utf-8-in-homewisd0960public_htmlwp-includesformatting-php-on-line-3019warning-htmlspecialchars-charset-utf-7-not-supported-a/ Thu, 16 Jan 2014 06:20:20 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/?p=4125                                         In late 2011, epidemiologist, writer and adventurer Elizabeth Pisani granted herself a sabbatical from the day job and set off to rediscover Indonesia, a country she has wandered, loved and been baffled by for decades. […]

The post Elizabeth Pisani’s next project – “Indonesia Etc. – Exploring the Improbable Nation” first appeared on The Wisdom of Whores.]]> https://www.wisdomofwhores.com/2013/03/14/the-good-side-of-homophobia/ Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:29:27 +0000 http://www.wisdomofwhores.com/?p=4097 It’s not often that proper reporters put their own reaction to the story they are working on front and centre, but it can be revealing. Have a listen to this wonderful From Our Own Correspondent from gay BBC journalist Paul Henley reporting from the frontlines of Russian homophobia. Without whining, Henley gives a wonderful flavour […]

The post The good side of homophobia first appeared on The Wisdom of Whores.]]>