10 Mar 2023 06:41PM (Updated: 10 Mar 2023 07:45PM)
SINGAPORE: A man initially sued Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) and three doctors for S$800,000 over the death of his mother. But he now has to pay more than $756,000 in costs and other expenses, after a High Court judge factored in how the man turned down a chance to settle.
In his judgement issued on Friday (Mar 10), Justice Choo Han Teck said TTSH and the doctors should not have to bear costs that might have been saved, given that the man suing them had refused the offer to settle and ended up worse off.
The man, Mr Chia Soo Kiang, had taken the hospital and three doctors to court in August 2022. He claimed they were negligent in diagnosing his 74-year-old mother Tan Yaw Lan at TTSH’s emergency department, and on admission to a ward. Madam Tan died in May 2018.
Justice Choo dismissed the case on Oct 13 last year, finding that the hospital and three doctors had not been negligent.
The parties then entered a hearing over costs and disbursements.
Lawyers for defendants argued that they offered S$15,000 to Mr Chia to settle the case on Apr 24, 2020. He did not accept.
TTSH and the three doctors then asked for costs of action to be fixed at S$625,500 and disbursements at S$156,107.21. .
The judge also noted that in this case, an offer of mediation had been rebuffed.
“In such circumstances, the law allows the court, unless for strong reasons otherwise, to order indemnity costs. I am of the view that the defendants here ought to be compensated by indemnity costs.”
On Feb. 8, Nobel Prize-winning French virologist Luc Montagnier died. News reports and obituaries did not give a cause of death for the 89-year-old, but nothing has come out to suggest that the death is suspicious or that foul play was involved.
Nevertheless, a recent Facebook post suggests that something untoward happened because Montagnier, who helped discover the virus that causes AIDS, made comments critical of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Proof that HIV is in the jab,” the Feb. 15 post says. “Dr. Montagnier ‘died’ on Feb. 8th… 2 days after exposing this.” The post then points to a link to a TikTok video about the vaccine that claims “HIV is PROVEN to be inside of the Devil juice!”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Montagnier promoted the conspiracy theory that SARS-CoV-2, the causative virus, was deliberately created and escaped from a laboratory.[6] Such a claim has been rejected by other virologists.[7][8][9] He has been criticised by other academics for using his Nobel prize status to “spread dangerous health messages outside his field of knowledge”.[10]
. Homeopathy
On 28 June 2010, Montagnier spoke at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany,[37] “where 60 Nobel prize winners had gathered, along with 700 other scientists, to discuss the latest breakthroughs in medicine, chemistry and physics.”[38] He “stunned his colleagues … when he presented a new method for detecting viral infections that bore close parallels to the basic tenets of homeopathy. Although fellow Nobel prize winners – who view homeopathy as quackery – were left openly shaking their heads, Montagnier’s comments were rapidly embraced by homeopaths eager for greater credibility. Cristal Sumner, of the British Homeopathic Association, said Montagnier’s work gave homeopathy ‘a true scientific ethos’.”[38]
When asked by Canada’s CBC Marketplace program if his work was indeed a theoretical basis for homeopathy as homeopaths had claimed, Montagnier replied that one “cannot extrapolate it to the products used in homeopathy”.[39]
Responses, criticisms, and interviews
The paper met with harsh criticism for not being peer-reviewed, and its claims unsubstantiated by modern mainstream conventions of physics and chemistry. No third party has replicated the findings as of March 2015.[citation needed] In response to Montagnier’s statement that the generally unfavorable response is due to the “non-understanding or misunderstanding of the breakthrough findings”, blogger Andy Lewis has written that he has found it difficult to assert what the paper “actually claims”, saying: “The paper … lacks any rigour. … important experimental steps are described dismissively in a sentence and little attempt is made to describe the detail of the work”.[40] While homeopaths claim his research as support for homeopathy, many scientists have greeted it with scorn and harsh criticism.[33][41][42]
In a 24 December 2010 Science magazine interview entitled “French Nobelist Escapes ‘Intellectual Terror’ to Pursue Radical Ideas in China”, he was questioned about his research and plans. In the interview he stated that Jacques Benveniste, whose controversial homeopathic work had been discredited, was “a modern Galileo“. When asked if he was not “worried that your colleagues will think you have drifted into pseudo-science”, he replied: “No, because it’s not pseudoscience. It’s not quackery. These are real phenomena which deserve further study.” He also mentioned that his applications for funding had been turned down and that he was leaving his home country to set up shop in China so he could escape what he called the “intellectual terror” which he claimed had prevented others from publishing their results.[citation needed] He stated that China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University is more “open minded” to his research. There he was chairman of the editorial board[34] of a new journal which published his research.[43]
Montagnier was also questioned on his beliefs about homeopathy, to which he replied: “I can’t say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules. We find that with DNA, we cannot work at the extremely high dilutions used in homeopathy; we cannot go further than a 10−18 dilution, or we lose the signal. But even at 10−18, you can calculate that there is not a single molecule of DNA left. And yet we detect a signal.”[43] .
COVID-19 pandemic
In 2020, Montagnier argued that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was man-made in a laboratory and that it might have been the result of an attempt to create a vaccine for HIV/AIDS. His allegation came after the United States had launched a probe into whether the virus came from a laboratory. According to Montagnier, the “presence of elements of HIV and germ of malaria in the genome of coronavirus is highly suspect and the characteristics of the virus could not have arisen naturally.”[50] Montagnier’s conclusions were rejected as hasty by the scientific community, considering the gene sequences are common among similar organisms.[10] There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was genetically engineered.[8][51]
I ate a fried grasshopper once. It had a slight taste of peanut butter probably from the oil used to fry the stuff, but the grasshopper was so rough that I could not really swallow it.
Zeynep Tufekci (Turkish: Zeynep Tüfekçi; [zejˈnep tyˈfektʃi]; zay-NEP tuu-FEK-chee) is a sociologist and a writer who is a columnist for The New York Times. Her work focuses on the social implications of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and big data, as well as societal challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic using complex and systems-based thinking. She has been described as “having a habit of being right on the big things” by The New York Times[1] and as one of the most prominent academic voices on social media and the new public sphere by The Chronicle of Higher Education.[2] In 2022, Tufekci was a Pulitzer finalist for her “insightful, often prescient, columns on the pandemic and American culture”, which the committee said “brought clarity to the shifting official guidance and compelled us towards greater compassion and informed response.”[3]
Before becoming a columnist, she was a writer for The New York Times and The Atlantic and has written regular columns for Wired and Scientific American in the past. She is a professor at Columbia University‘s Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.[4][5][6] She was previously an associate professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina.
NEWS: Cochrane says lead author of a mask review misrepresented its findings, apologizes for summary statement that was imprecise and says they will update it.
They say their review did NOT find masks don't work.
NEWS: Cochrane says lead author of a mask review misrepresented its findings, apologizes for summary statement that was imprecise and says they will update it. They say their review did NOT find masks don’t work. Plus, I examine the actual evidence.
It will be publicly available. I am breaking the news in the piece, but will add a link to their public statement when they post it.
Thank you for posting the full the statement, and of course for your NYT piece with the in-depth analysis of so many of the responses to the Cochrane study.
Masks are a tool, with a time and place. People can have opinions about mandates and their time and place, but we should not deny or misrepresent the evidence, including the uncertainties. In this case, kudos to Cochrane for correcting the record. Hope people notice.
Discussing masks seems to bring out weird stuff. It’s a tool. It’s not a magic wand. We have vaccines and treatments, which is great. But no need to go on a warpath against masks and misrepresent the evidence base. Worn correctly and consistently, they help. Not that hard.
Why are you ignoring the illogical rules, etc? I am not. I’ve written my first “open the parks” piece in April 2020. That there were illogical rules, overblown claims and/or weak studies (yep) doesn’t invalidate that masks are a tool, with benefits that have a time and a place.
Also, sorry, especially (#notall) MDs. Randomization whenever possible is great—and essential for drug trials—but it’s not always possible. MDs don’t get to decide all rules of science. Natural experiments, regression-discontinuity, case control, labs… That’s also evidence.
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NEWS: Cochrane says lead author of a mask review misrepresented its findings, apologizes for summary statement that was imprecise and says they will update it.
They say their review did NOT find masks don't work.
Why are you ignoring the illogical rules, etc? I am not. I've written my first "open the parks" piece in April 2020.
That there were illogical rules, overblown claims and/or weak studies (yep) doesn't invalidate that masks are a tool, with benefits that have a time and a place. pic.twitter.com/w7RVXHwiS4
— simonthong aka kitty poo (@KittyPo80176717) March 11, 2023
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In case you missed it… watch the British High Commissioner's response to a question about whether Australia should have notified the Brits that King Charles won't be on the $5 note. For more SBS News video visit: https://t.co/92PmLUnoT1pic.twitter.com/GX1XezCZiS
Do physical measures such as hand‐washing or wearing masks stop or slow down the spread of respiratory viruses?
Key messages We are uncertain whether wearing masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses based on the studies we assessed.
Hand hygiene programmes may help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses.
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What did we find? We identified 78 relevant studies. They took place in low‐, middle‐, and high‐income countries worldwide: in hospitals, schools, homes, offices, childcare centres, and communities during non‐epidemic influenza periods, the global H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, epidemic influenza seasons up to 2016, and during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We identified five ongoing, unpublished studies; two of them evaluate masks in COVID‐19. Five trials were funded by government and pharmaceutical companies, and nine trials were funded by pharmaceutical companies.
No studies looked at face shields, gowns and gloves, or screening people when they entered a country.
We assessed the effects of:
· medical or surgical masks;
· N95/P2 respirators (close‐fitting masks that filter the air breathed in, more commonly used by healthcare workers than the general public); and
· hand hygiene (hand‐washing and using hand sanitiser).
We obtained the following results:
Medical or surgical masks
Ten studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers. Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu‐like illness/COVID‐like illness (9 studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 13,919 people). Unwanted effects were rarely reported; discomfort was mentioned.
N95/P2 respirators
Four studies were in healthcare workers, and one small study was in the community. Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu‐like illness (5 studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people). Unwanted effects were not well‐reported; discomfort was mentioned.
Hand hygiene
Following a hand hygiene programme may reduce the number of people who catch a respiratory or flu‐like illness, or have confirmed flu, compared with people not following such a programme (19 studies; 71,210 people), although this effect was not confirmed as statistically significant reduction when ILI and laboratory‐confirmed ILI were analysed separately. Few studies measured unwanted effects; skin irritation in people using hand sanitiser was mentioned.
What are the limitations of the evidence? Our confidence in these results is generally low to moderate for the subjective outcomes related to respiratory illness, but moderate for the more precisely defined laboratory‐confirmed respiratory virus infection, related to masks and N95/P2 respirators. The results might change when further evidence becomes available. Relatively low numbers of people followed the guidance about wearing masks or about hand hygiene, which may have affected the results of the studies.
How up to date is this evidence? We included evidence published up to October 2022. .
Authors’ conclusions
The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions. There were additional RCTs during the pandemic related to physical interventions but a relative paucity given the importance of the question of masking and its relative effectiveness and the concomitant measures of mask adherence which would be highly relevant to the measurement of effectiveness, especially in the elderly and in young children.
There is uncertainty about the effects of face masks. The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect. The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection. Hand hygiene is likely to modestly reduce the burden of respiratory illness, and although this effect was also present when ILI and laboratory‐confirmed influenza were analysed separately, it was not found to be a significant difference for the latter two outcomes. Harms associated with physical interventions were under‐investigated.
There is a need for large, well‐designed RCTs addressing the effectiveness of many of these interventions in multiple settings and populations, as well as the impact of adherence on effectiveness, especially in those most at risk of ARIs.
We can confirm that this nonsense of stopping individuals for their attire is not one off. I feel there are way too many and it goes unreported. pic.twitter.com/7dJw24fsxC
#NSTnation Another case of a civil servant enforcing #dresscode regulations has emerged after a woman was denied entry to the Companies Commission of Malaysia (#SSM) office in Ipoh for her #attire.https://t.co/UnZhszu6Eb
