Donie's daily Ireland news BLOG Friday

Irish Medical Organisation rejects motion on abortion provisions

 

Heated debate on abortion best attended at annual conference

IMO doctors vote against an abortion motion at their annual conference in The Europe Hotel, Killarney today.

The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has rejected a motion calling for regulation in relation to the provision of abortion where there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother.

In a heated and occasionally bad-tempered debate at the organisation’s annual conference in Killarney, doctors also voted against a motion calling for legislation to allow abortion in Ireland in cases of rape or incest. They also voted against a motion calling on the Government to legislate for the provision of abortion for women with non-viable foetal abnormalities.

The session on the abortion motions was the best attended at the conference.

The three motions on abortion were proposed by Cork GP Dr Mary Favier.

Speaking on the motion calling for regulation on abortion where there is real and substantive risk to the life of the mother, she said the lives of Irish womenwere being compromised by the failure to address the need for abortion where a woman’s life was being threatened by an on-going pregnancy.

Dr Peter Quinn, a retired GP from Cork, said Ireland was long known as one of the safest places in the world to have a baby and he wanted to take issue with Dr Favier on the issue of safety.

The motion was defeated by 42 votes to 32.

Dr Mark Murphy, a GP from Sligo who seconded the three motions, said women in Ireland who had cancer and were pregnant had to get on a flight to go the UK. He said obstetricians had asked for clarity. He said it was not opening the floodgates but rather was aimed at helping women who were extremely vulnerable and who had extreme ill health.

Dublin GP Dr Cyril Daly said he was reminded of German doctors before the second world war who decided that young children with conditions such as blindness or deafness had lives that were not worth living and who were subsequently killed with cynanide.

Dr Eleanor Corcoran, a consultant psychiatrist, said if the motion was passed there would be abortion on demand in no time.

On the issue of abortion in cases of rape and incest , Dr Favier said she wanted to ask doctors what they would do if they came across cases such as the girl in the “X” case who was raped at the age of 14 and became pregnant.

Dr Peter O’Sullivan, a GP from Dublin, said he could not remember a case where a patient wanted an abortion following a criminal act.

Dr John Keogh of Kildare said the motion brought the abortion debate to another level. “We are now talking about, despite the traumatic and dreadful situation regarding the conception, aborting normal healthy babies”. He said conception should not be a criteria for abortion.

Dr Peadar O’Grady said that to reject the motion, doctors would be saying that they believed a a 14 year-old girl who was raped and who had made an informed choice to have an abortion should be forced to carry the pregnancy through. “It would put us as some of the most backward doctors in Europe. ”

On the motion regarding foetal abnormalities, Dr Favier said the current situation was that women must continue until labour even when there was no prospect of a health surviving infant. “That is just cruel”.

Trade union urges Irish people to not go along with Revenue threats on Property Tax

       

The trade union Unite is calling for an Irish public boycott of the Property Tax which, it said, is causing huge distress and despair in society.
The trade union, which is one of the country’s largest, is urging the public to hold firm and start by not engaging with Revenue.

Unite has joined forces with the Campaign against Household and Water Taxes and will be participating in a day of protest on April 13.

The Revenue Commissioners have said they have sent more than a million letters to homeowners in recent weeks, and €1.3m has already been collected.

Regional Secretary of Unite Jimmy Kelly maintains they can still win the fight against the tax.

Mr Kelly said: “We want to build a campaign as strong as possible based on a boycott. The Government is just threatening people imposing a further austerity tax, calling it a property tax and threatening people by telling them they will take it out of their wages or social welfare or farm payments.

“We are saying ‘Don’t just go with those threats, you can resist this and we can have a victory on this campaign’.

“But it will take a long organising campaign to get to where it’ll need to be.”

Gay Irish school staff ‘are being bullied by their pupils’

         

Gay Irish teachers are being bullied by students in secondary schools, a teachers’ conference has heard.

A motion proposed and carried on the final day of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) annual conference urged the eduction department to better protect gay and lesbian secondary school teachers.

Patrick Hogan, of the Limerick city school branch, spoke to the 400 TUI delegates in Galway yesterday and highlighted “the fear being suffered by so many of our colleagues”.

He said action was needed immediately.

“Our LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) colleagues fight to overcome the huge fears they face in their schools every day.

“These fears are not just of losing their jobs, but fears of homophobic bullying they face on the corridors of their schools,” Mr Hogan said.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, Mr Hogan added that management in some schools was turning a blind eye to homophobic bullying of teachers by students.

“These may be colleagues who are already under strain within a school and this is allowed to be tolerated,” he said.

“They would be isolated incidents around the country.

“In one part of the country, there is a teacher who is under severe strain at the moment, and was transferred into a particular school – she was not happy with this.

“She was transferred out of there and has since been transferred back in there and faces this (homophobic bullying) on a daily basis,” Mr Hogan added.

Without identifying the school or teacher, Mr Hogan said management at her school were aware of what was happening to her, but said the bullying of the staff member was still occurring.

“It is being dealt with locally by the branch there,” Mr Hogan said.

Tax: Separately, TUI delegates have overwhelmingly agreed to oppose the contentious property tax.

In recent weeks, homeowners across the country have received correspondence from Revenue Commissioners instructing them to pay property tax rates in accordance with the value of their property.

Kenneth Sloane, of Dundalk IT, said the tax was part of an austerity policy that had failed the country.

Mr Sloane said teachers had “paid considerable amounts of stamp duty” on homes, including many bought at the peak of the construction boom.

He described the property tax as “another attack” on trade union members such as the TUI.

The TUI represents over 14,000 second-level teachers and third-level lecturers.

Walking may be just as effective as running for bringing heart benefits

  

If you’re a runner, a new study suggests you may be able to slow down and still gain the same health benefits.

A study of almost 50,000 Americans finds brisk walking can be just as effective at reducing heart health risks like high blood pressure and cholesterol as going on a full-speed run.

“People are always looking for an excuse not to exercise, but now they have a straightforward choice to run or to walk and invest in their future health,” study author Dr. Paul T. Williams, a principal author and staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Life Science Division in Berkeley, Calif., said in apress release.

For the study, published April 4 in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, researchers compared the cardiovascular health of participants enrolled in two ongoing studies: The National Runners’ Health Study, with a pool of more than 33,000 runners, and the National Walker’s Health Study that contains more than 15,000 Americans. All runners were between the ages of 18 and 80 (with many clustered in their 40s and 50s), with men representing about 20 percent of walkers and more than 50 percent of runners.

The researchers were comparing the total running expenditure based on amount of time participants were running or walking. They compared these self-reported cardio exercise times with rates of hypertension (high blood pressure), hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol), diabetes and coronary heart disease, as diagnosed by a doctor.

The researchers found walking reduced risk to be diagnosed with either hypertension or hypercholesterolemia by 7 percent each, compared with about a 4 percent risk reduction for both seen in the runners.

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Runners were 12.1 percent less likely to be diagnosed with diabetes, compared to 12.3 percent in walkers. Walking reduced heart disease risk by more than 9 percent, compared with 4.5 percent in the runners.

The more people exercised, the better their health, the researchers found.

“The more the runners ran and the walkers walked, the better off they were in health benefits. If the amount of energy expended was the same between the two groups, then the health benefits were comparable,” said Williams.

Though the study found benefits regardless of exercise intensity, the researchers noted runners are likely to cover more ground when they exercise, which could lead to more health benefits.

“Walking may be a more sustainable activity for some people when compared to running, however, those who choose running end up exercising twice as much as those that choose walking. This is probably because they can do twice as much in an hour,” he added.

Williams hopes his study provides a message that exercise is an investment in future health.

Less than one-half of Americans engage in the minimum-recommended amount of physical activity of 2.5 hours a week, a 2012 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found. The report, however, did show 62 percent of Americans went on a 10-minute walk each week, up from 56 percent five years ago.

Dr. Charles Platkin, a distinguished lecturer at CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College in New York City who researchers exercise and calorie expenditure, told CBSNews.com that previous studies have shown working out, regardless of intensity, can lead to another health benefit — a reduced risk for obesity.

What’s great about the new study, said Platkin, who was not involved in the research, is that it showed the same is true for cardiovascular health. He thinks the aging population could especially benefit from this advice, because running can impact the joints and present other challenges for seniors.

“It’s going against what you’d think would be the best thing (for your health)” said Platkin, “which is really good news for those who are not so active.”

His suggestion for those who say they don’t have enough time to exercise? Make walking a utility in your life, meaning don’t think of it as exercise, but attach a necessary activity to your walk. For example, he recommended every time you go to the post office, walk there instead of driving.

Cloud computing now surging ahead in the Irish market place

  

Some 85% of Irish businesses are clamouring for cloud options from their IT providers, finds an Irish Computer survey. Is the channel ready to serve?

Cloud computing has been variously described as the greatest opportunity for the channel in recent years and a threat to the very business of selling ICT. As with so many issues, the truth lies somewhere in between these two extremes.

Irish Computer, in association with Let’s Operate, surveyed its readership in the channel to see how cloud computing is perceived and ultimately, whether it is an opportunity or a threat.

The survey was conducted in February and March of this year with 110 respondents, and began by asking if resellers had received enquiries from their customers for cloud services.

Customer demand
The vast majority (85%) said that they had received such enquiries within the last 12 months. While respondents were not asked to specify the scale ranges of their customers, it is probably safe to speculate that the 15% who had not received cloud enquiries in the last 12 months are dealing with smaller companies who may have a limited IT infrastructure and relatively unsophisticated needs when it comes to IT.

“Cloud computing has been around for a long time but Irish businesses are now seriously investigating implementation and asking their IT support companies about it,” said David Owens, managing director, Let’s Operate.

Increasing questions
This issue of interest and demand was expanded by asking whether there was an expectation for an increase in cloud offering enquiries. Again, overwhelmingly (87%), the respondents indicated that they expected increases in enquiries for cloud services from their customers in the next 12 months. Curiously however, just over 8% said that they did not expect an increase while an unenlightening 4% said they didn’t know.

This level of enquiries from customers, when combined with the expectation for a rise in same, contrasts somewhat with 25% of respondents who say that they do not currently have a cloud option for customers. The implication, warns Owens, is that “interest and demand for cloud computing is out pacing the channels’ preparedness to service it”. It is even more curious, given the range of cloud services on offer in the market, from pure email to cloud-hosted enterprise resource planning (ERP), that there are IT service companies that still do not offer their clients cloud services.

Cloud offerings
Delving further, respondents were asked if they did not currently have a cloud option to offer customers, were they exploring the possibility of providing one. Oddly, 45% said that they were not.

This lack of exploration of cloud options for customers does not tally with the results that indicated the vast majority (78%) do not view cloud computing as a threat to their core business, with almost 80% indicating that they saw cloud computing as an opportunity. There must surely be an overlap among those who see cloud as an opportunity but do not yet offer their customers a cloud option.

Of those who did see it as a threat (15%), by far the greatest element of that threat was that it would cannibalise existing business. Loss of control or relationship with customers and lower margins were closely ranked in second and third, and difficulty in incentivising sales people was a distant fourth.