Tie fuss

British hospitals are banning neckties, long sleeves and jewelry in an effort to stop the spread of deadly hospital-borne infections, according to new rules published Monday.Hospital dress codes typically urge doctors to look professional, which, for male practitioners, has usually meant wearing a tie. But as concern over hospital-borne infections has intensified, doctors are taking a closer look at their clothing.

"Ties are rarely laundered but worn daily," the Department of Health said in a statement. "They perform no beneficial function in patient care and have been shown to be colonized by pathogens."

The new regulations would mean an end to doctors' traditional white coats, Health Secretary Alan Johnson said. Fake nails, jewelry and watches, which the department warned could harbor germs, are also out.

Johnson said the "bare below the elbows" dress code would help prevent the spread of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, the deadly bacteria resistant to nearly every available antibiotic.

The New York Hospital Queens team found nearly half of the ties worn by medical workers harboured disease-causing bacteria.Almost half (47.6%) of the ties worn by clinicians were found to harbour bacteria that can cause disease.This was eight times the odds of ties worn by security staff from the same hospital being infected.

I hate the piece of clothing. It has no purpose.I have never been able to knot one right.Neither do I wear a washed one daily.Its health risks are imaginable of course: carotid sinus syncope, glaucoma,means for strangulation. One of my professors at KEM who has a fetish for oddly colored ties( we know who, don't we?) nearly strangulated himself while choking off the airway of a person whom he was trying to intubate when the tie got into the ET tube!!!
But i hate it for being a colonial handout from the prissy sahebs of old- whose purpose we have never questioned, insulting our originality in our inability to come out with something better.A bow( so gay!) or Chinese collars ( not for the syringomyelic or double chinned) just pass muster.

They gave the fool education of note
To call him doc, a stupid white coat,
And if he blundered, was ain't upstaid, too TIEght
To strangle him, this kanthalangot.