Daniel Jackson

There is a latent consensus among political scientists and highbrow columnists that the liberal era is over and that, following Brexit and Trump, we are entering a period of neo-nationalism. This consensus will develop further if, as I suspect she will, Marine Le Pen wins the French presidential election next May. Two recent editorials in the Economist demonstrate how quickly this is happening. In July, it was argued that ‘the new divide in rich countries is not between left and right but between open and closed’. Last week, we were told that ‘the long, hard job of winning the argument for liberal internationalism begins anew’. The challenge to liberalism is still seen as an argument to be won rather than an irreversible sea-change.

Elon Musk, the billionaire inventor and entrepreneur, the twenty-first century’s answer to Howard Hughes, believes we are living in a computer simulation. The chances that we exist in ‘base reality’ are billions to one, he says. Last week he told an audience of Silicon Valley tech evangelists: ‘Forty years ago we had Pong. Like, two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were.’ ‘Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it's getting better every year. Soon we'll have virtual reality, augmented reality.

Obfuscation is an important tool in the kit of any snake oil salesman, which helps to explain why the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital has changed its name. It’s now known as The Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine. In this context the word ‘integrated’ is used because it’s suitably vague. It’s a catch-all term to describe any treatment ‘outside of mainstream healthcare’ – or in other words, treatments that don’t work. Homeopathy is a huge embarrassment to the NHS, but it’s not nearly as maligned as it should be. In fact it has one very prestigious backer, with a direct line to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister.

A ‘jobless mother of four’ from Cumbria has jetted off to Budapest for another round of cosmetic surgery. Andrea Dalzell has been saving child benefit money since 2003 for a string of procedures including face and eyebrow lifts, botox injections and a ‘designer vagina’. At that price the question on my lips is ‘designed by whom?’ On Facebook the 48-year-old grandmother said her latest trip to Budapest (for a cheek and brow lift) cost £3,500. The package included flights, food and accommodation. Without wishing to cast aspersions on her particular surgeon, at that price there's a huge danger of corners being cut, so to speak. ‘Package surgery’ is still a relatively new phenomenon.

The name says it all. 'Dying Without Dignity' is the parliamentary health ombudsman's report into over 300 complaints of the neglect of terminally ill patients by the NHS. The BBC this morning highlights two horrible examples. One mother had to call an A&E doctor to come and give her son more pain relief because staff on the palliative care ward he had been on had failed to respond to her requests. A 67-year-old man's family learned of his terminal cancer diagnosis through a hospital note – before he knew himself. This 'failed every principle of established good practice in breaking bad news', says the report.

If you’ve glanced at a newspaper in the last few months you’ll have noticed that obesity is public health enemy number one. The Guardian has a special section devoted to it – seriously. Its mantra is: 'Britain is in the grip of an obesity crisis.' In 2007 the National Obesity Forum issued a report which predicted that half of the population will be obese by 2050; now they are saying that was an underestimate. That’s all well and good, but it’s not much use knowing that we’re in the midst of an epidemic if the tools we use to diagnose obesity aren’t up to scratch.

Some exciting news about the future of medicine was announced today. Unfortunately, you really need a degree in biochemistry – which I certainly don't have – to understand it. But we'd better get used to that, because the eradication of nasty diseases is increasingly a project for geneticists whose findings are difficult to grasp (but easy to misunderstand). Editas, described as a 'leading genome editing company', has announced the highlights of the 18th annual meeting of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) in New Orleans. Here's just one of them: Gene conversion of the hemoglobin locus: Several CRISPR/Cas9 construct variants were evaluated in vitro to target the human hemoglobin beta gene (HBB) in the region mutated in sickle cell anaemia.

As the FT reports, Apple and IBM have got into bed together. The deal they've struck has major implications for the growing number of people using wearable tech (and indeed mobile phones) to monitor their health. Here are the details. IBM has entered into partnership with Apple and other manufacturers of medical devices to make health data from wearable tech available to doctors and insurers. One outcome will be personalised treatments for diabetics. But that's only part of the picture. This is how it will work. If you're self-monitoring your heart rate, calories and cholesterol levels – as more and more of us are – you will now be able to use an IBM app to store it in a cloud.

The link between wealth and attainment is a subject that’s close to my heart, or perhaps more accurately my cerebral cortex. Like 20 per cent of the population I was raised in technical poverty. My first home was a touring caravan. It’s safe to say that no statistician would have expected me to amount to anything – especially if they’d had access to the findings of a new study in Nature Neuroscience. Researchers have found that there is an association between low family income and the structure of the brains of children. The study looked at the relationship between wealth and the size of the brain’s surface area. The measurements were derived from a method of analysing of biological form called morphometrics.

Have you noticed how often adults – particularly of the earnest, nagging variety who work in the public sector – are behaving like children? I don't mean acting childishly, but literally behaving like children. Last week delegates to the NUS women’s conference were using ‘jazz-hands’ instead of clapping – in case it should trigger an anxiety attack. I can think of five-year-olds who would squirm at that spectacle. Meanwhile, Brown University in America recently debated sexual assault on campus. A serious topic, but the authorities deemed it necessary to create a 'safe space' full of play-doh, bubbles, calming music and colouring books. Yes, colouring books. But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised.