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Margaret McCartney

Margaret McCartney

General practitioner and freelance writer

Oct 22, 2026

9:24
And I'm wondering, is there a conversation now, is that happening at all now, to think about how to distinguish different types of screening, when they're useful, when they're not, and what evidence is needed for each?
9:40
So just let's clarify, first of all, screening is only for people without symptoms.
9:44
As soon as you have a symptom, it's not a screening test.
9:46
You're on a diagnostic pathway then.
9:48
So screening is only for people that don't have any symptoms.
9:51
So it's a completely separate thing when you're talking about symptomatic testing for people who have presented themselves to a doctor or who have got symptoms of disease.
10:00
So screening is the act of going to find people without symptoms who believe themselves to be well and healthy and and offering them a test.

7 MINS LATER

17:15
What other harms might people experience because they've had health screening, which wasn't merited and which have picked up, as we'd say, incidental omas?
17:27
Margaret, what do you make of this? Do you think that prescribing art and culture can work? It's such an interesting question.
17:35
And I think we have to think about this in the background of what's been happening in the UK over the last couple of decades.
17:40
We've had a massive cull of youth centres and clubs, libraries, public spaces where people could go in, be warm, all those reading groups, nursery round groups you used to have when your children were small.
17:51
The BBC reported last year that libraries are being lost at 40 per year.
17:55
So we've lost these kind of social public spaces that people can go into, feel welcomed in, somewhere where young people can go.
18:01
And at the same time, we've had this trend whereby the normal things that would have been available to members of the community to go in and enjoy and take part in have kind of been medicalised and put into this umbrella of what's now been called social prescribing.
18:17
With this idea that GPs or other clinicians can refer someone in for this intervention.
20:33
Is targeting groups the key to this? And then how do you measure the impact of that?
5:37
Why don't you take us away next?
5:40
Um, so I grew up in DC, and I'm trying to think, like, what's, what was my early experience.
5:45
This doesn't really have anything to do with DC music, but when I was, like, 15, I went to Merriweather Post to see, uh, UB40.
5:52
I don't know if Merriweather-

27 MINS LATER

32:36
Did you feel, um, any of the, you know, things that people, any of the horror stories that people have about major labels or anything like that? Or was it a pretty good experience? Did it kinda move the ball along, or did it turn out that you, you end up doing everything yourself anyways, and, you know, it's kinda-
32:58
I mean, we had more money to tour and stuff like that, and to record.
33:02
I wouldn't say they did a ton of stuff for us, but, you know, [laughs] I think we never expected to be in that position of, like, doing that for a living anyway.
33:12
So it was kind of like, "Oh, this is cool.

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