It’s now almost exactly 50 years since the release of Marvin Gaye’s seminal album, one of the few records worthy of the accolade, the fruit of months of work with The Funk Brothers at the Hitsville USA studio in Detroit. Why do I mention this now? Anniversary aside, simply because the themes of social breakdown, the surge in mental illness in Vietnam veterans and (and here he really was ahead of his time) the environment in ‘Mercy, mercy me’. The title of course, didn’t (clearly deliberately) include a question mark: it’s more of a statement reminding us (like many of these papers) how far we still have to go and, I still love it for its prescience, continued relevance and beauty. We all have moments either in our recollective lockers (or stored up in the ‘this could happen to me’ cortex) of ‘what if I’d facilitated/done more than focus on the examination because it was Friday afternoon/not allowed myself to ignore my gut feeling on the basis of a normal blood work up?’.
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