I ring the Kent and Sussex Hospital to try and find out when my mother can expect to have her hip replaced. I’m worried that the hospital may have sent her a letter and that she may have lost it—as she has become very forgetful. Indeed, she’s dementing. […]
djfhdkfdkjfhakdjfhkadsfhldksjfajdfkdajfhkdlsfhkdlsfhkdsfhskldfhdkfhdsklCategory: Columnists
Richard Smith: Get with Web 2.0 or become yesterday’s person
Web 2.0—the social web—has the potential to improve global health greatly and to solve complex problems in health science—as it has already done in particle physics. I heard this message at a conference on global health in Geneva last week, but I also heard that the barriers to these potential achievements are social and cultural, […]
djfhdkfdkjfhakdjfhkadsfhldksjfajdfkdajfhkdlsfhkdlsfhkdsfhskldfhdkfhdsklLiz Wager: Would you review a paper by your ex-husband?
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by the revelation (from recently released official papers) that the UK Government wanted to suppress findings about the dangers of smoking because it was worried about the possible effect on tax revenues. It’s a great example of the fact that absolutely everybody has some sort of interest in research findings. […]
djfhdkfdkjfhakdjfhkadsfhldksjfajdfkdajfhkdlsfhkdlsfhkdsfhskldfhdkfhdsklJulian Sheather: Is depression a problem of meaning or of medicine?
In a recent article in the BMJ Paul Biegler returns to a familiar theme in some of the more reflective literature on depression. Should an episode of depression be seen primarily as a biochemical problem, a problem of brain chemistry, or is it a problem tied to the individual’s understanding of the world? […]
djfhdkfdkjfhakdjfhkadsfhldksjfajdfkdajfhkdlsfhkdlsfhkdsfhskldfhdkfhdsklLiz Wager: Training and the placebo effect
I’ve been at the Vienna School of Clinical Research running a publication workshop for an enthusiastic bunch of doctors, researchers and drug company folk. Back home, catching up on my reading, Diana Wood’s BMJ editorial on problem based learning struck a chord. She argues that we don’t really know whether problem based learning works better than […]
djfhdkfdkjfhakdjfhkadsfhldksjfajdfkdajfhkdlsfhkdlsfhkdsfhskldfhdkfhdsklJulian Sheather on the Wellcome exhibition “Life Before Death”
Jannik Boehmfeld is dead. He is six years old, a year younger than my eldest son. He is lying on his back. His mouth is open but his eyes are shut. […]
djfhdkfdkjfhakdjfhkadsfhldksjfajdfkdajfhkdlsfhkdlsfhkdsfhskldfhdkfhdsklJulian Sheather: Does art make people better doctors?
Recently a colleague of mine, a GP, told me she was taking a three-month sabbatical. She was going to sit on an island in the Mediterranean and do very little more than read novels. Reading novels, she said, made her a better doctor. After I had shrugged off the spasm of envy, I started to […]
djfhdkfdkjfhakdjfhkadsfhldksjfajdfkdajfhkdlsfhkdlsfhkdsfhskldfhdkfhdsklSimon Chapman: Conferences and carbon
Earlier this year I declined an invitation to fly all expenses from Sydney to Geneva to speak for 15 minutes at an international cancer conference. There was a hole in my calendar. Geneva is a hop from Lyon, where I have good friends. I have a son in London who I haven’t seen for a […]
djfhdkfdkjfhakdjfhkadsfhldksjfajdfkdajfhkdlsfhkdlsfhkdsfhskldfhdkfhdsklLiz Wager: Researchers behaving badly
At an international research integrity meeting in Lisbon last year, I was horrified when a US scientist told me that UK universities didn’t reply to her concerns about alleged research misconduct. We cannot be proud of the fact that the UK scientific establishment took so long to set up a body to investigate research misconduct. […]
djfhdkfdkjfhakdjfhkadsfhldksjfajdfkdajfhkdlsfhkdlsfhkdsfhskldfhdkfhdsklRichard Smith: Private health care – essential for improving care in the developing world
People in Bangladesh get 80% of their healthcare from the private sector. Across Sub-Saharan Africa it’s 60%, and the proportion is increasing. The poorer people are the more likely they are to receive private care, and the middle classes consume more publicly funded care than the poor. […]
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