Doctors flock to Twitter to post Valentine’s Day rhymes

Roses are red, violets are blue is how the cliché poem usually goes on Valentine’s Day.

But scores of doctors and nurses have flocked to social media today to draw up parody versions of the infamous rhyme.

Posting under the hashtag #medicalvalentine, dozens of creative versions have amassed hundreds of retweets by amused Twitter users.

Dubious links between autism and vaccines have been mocked, while others have used it as a way to post crude jokes with a medical twist.

Health and Social Care Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has drawn flak for his running of the NHS, has also fallen victim to some of the poems. 

While @MenInNursing, which supports ‘the brotherhood of men in nursing, used the hashtag to highlight the shift in stereotypical gender roles

@BMcMullen87 wrote: ‘Roses are red, diabetics are sweet, you have Peyronie’s disease, that’s why you have a bent Peter’

Twitter user @911GlockDoc, who claims to work in emergency medicine, used the opportunity to address the link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

In his post which gained 76 ‘likes’ at the time this was published, he wrote: ‘Roses are red, tulips are pink, vaccines and autism, there is no link’.

While @MenInNursing, which supports ‘the brotherhood of men in nursing, used the hashtag to highlight the shift in stereotypical gender roles.

The group’s amusing take on the poem read: ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, it’s not 1950, men can be nurses too.’ 

Paediatrician Rod Kelly, @rodkelly50, asked: ‘Roses are red, the bed state’s still black, when will Jeremy Hunt, be getting the sack?’ 

Others saw the hashtag as the perfect opportunity to create crude jokes, including one revolving around ‘dead’ testicles.

Paediatrician Rod Kelly, @rodkelly50, asked: ‘Roses are red, the bed state’s still black, when will Jeremy Hunt, be getting the sack?’

Nurse practitioner Kristy Valentine, @Kristy5150, wrote: ‘Roses are red, his sac [scrotum] is blue, the testi [testicle] is dead, this was not the flu’

Nurse practitioner Kristy Valentine, @Kristy5150, wrote: ‘Roses are red, his sac [scrotum] is blue, the testi [testicle] is dead, this was not the flu.’ 

And @BMcMullen87 wrote: ‘Roses are red, diabetics are sweet, you have Peyronie’s disease, that’s why you have a bent Peter.’

However, some of the takes on the ‘roses are red’ rhyme were too medical for the general public to understand.

Lauren Weekes, @WeekesLauren, an anaesthetist from Devon, used the hashtag to highlight REBOA – a technique used in trauma for patients bleeding to death.

Her rhyme went: ‘Roses are fast, violets are slower, smashed up your pelvis?, you could do with REBOA’.

Dr Anu Mitra, a consultant emergency physician based at Charing Cross Hospital, London, used Twitter to highlight his concerns in the NHS earlier this winter.

@AcmeDr posted a series of tweets describing the ‘battlefield medicine’ situation, which saw patients being treated in corridors.

And, jumping on this bandwagon, his poem read: ‘Your nose is bright red, your MCV is 102, you say you’re an occasional drinker, but I just don’t believe you.’

It is believed that MCV refers to the medical term, mean corpuscular volume. This measures the average volume of red blood cells, and can be raised by boozing.

Lauren Weekes, @WeekesLauren, an anaesthetist from Devon, used the hashtag to highlight REBOA – a technique used in trauma for patients bleeding to death

Dr Anu Mitra, an emergency physician based at Charing Cross Hospital, wrote: ‘Your nose is bright red, your MCV is 102, you say you’re an occasional drinker, but I just don’t believe you’

IS ANDREW WAKEFIELD’S DISCREDITED AUTISM RESEARCH TO BLAME FOR LOW MEASLES VACCINATION RATES?

Andrew Wakefield’s discredited autism research has long been blamed for a drop in measles vaccination rates

In 1995, gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield published a study in The Lancet showing children who had been vaccinated against MMR were more likely to have bowel disease and autism.

He speculated that being injected with a ‘dead’ form of the measles virus via vaccination causes disruption to intestinal tissue, leading to both of the disorders.

After a 1998 paper further confirmed this finding, Wakefield said: ‘The risk of this particular syndrome [what Wakefield termed ‘autistic enterocolitis’] developing is related to the combined vaccine, the MMR, rather than the single vaccines.’

At the time, Wakefield had a patent for single measles, mumps and rubella vaccines, and was therefore accused of having a conflict of interest.

Nonetheless, MMR vaccination rates in the US and the UK plummeted, until, in 2004 the then-editor of The Lancet Dr Richard Horton described Wakefield’s research as ‘fundamentally flawed’, adding he was paid by attorneys seeking lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers.

The Lancet formally retracted Wakefield’s research paper in 2010.

Three months later, the General Medical Council banned Wakefield from practicing medicine in Britain, stating his research had shown a ‘callous disregard’ for children’s health.

On January 6 2011, The British Medical Journal published a report showing that of the 12 children included in Wakefield’s 1995 study, at most two had autistic symptoms post vaccination, rather than the eight he claimed.

At least two of the children also had developmental delays before they were vaccinated, yet Wakefield’s paper claimed they were all ‘previously normal’.

Further findings revealed none of the children had autism, non-specific colitis or symptoms within days of receiving the MMR vaccine, yet the study claimed six of the participants suffered all three.