A reader of The BMJ has written to the editor to ask for clarification of the terms “sepsis” and “septicaemia”. The answer could be said to be rather creepy. The IndoEuropean root SERP meant to crawl or creep. The Latin verb serpere meant to glide or crawl, to wind along like a snake, to extend […]
Category: Columnists
Paul Glasziou: How to hide trial results in plain sight
Paul Glasziou discusses why trial results need to be better presented, so that readers can understand and act on the results. […]
William Cayley: We must not forget the forgotten
A week ago, the news was awash with shock, dismay, and outrage over President Trump’s executive order of 27 January, which temporarily suspended the United States’s refugee program and indefinitely barred the admittance of refugees from Syria. While it has been heartening to read reports of protests, and to see the number of professional and […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Selenium
I have previously written about cadmium and lithium, two of three elements that were discovered in 1817. The third, selenium, was discovered by Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848), who is also credited with having discovered cerium, silicon, and thorium. Berzelius wrote that the similarity of its properties to those of tellurium had induced him to call […]
Richard Smith: Dumfries and Galloway NHS 5—The new hospital of 2017 replaces the new one of 1975
Richard Smith visited and wrote about the NHS in Dumfries and Galloway in 1980, 1990, and 1999, and this series of blogs describes what he found in 2016. A feature article provides a summary. When I first visited Dumfries in 1980, the new hospital was only five years old. I enthused over it, but now […]
Nick Hopkinson: Bad air, poor memory
One explanation that has been offered for the UK’s self-destructive decision to leave the European Union is that there are now few people left alive who can remember the ruined Europe after the Second World War. Last year saw the 60th anniversary of the Clean Air Act, but it seems that the great smogs and […]
Martin McKee: The Brexit White Paper—making Britain great again?
The long awaited Brexit White Paper has finally appeared. Yet Martin McKee finds it fails to shed any light on how Brexit’s consequences for health (or much else) will be addressed. […]
Richard Smith: Dumfries and Galloway NHS 4: Community hospitals—loved by locals but seen as expensive by the authorities
Richard Smith visited and wrote about the NHS in Dumfries and Galloway in 1980, 1990, and 1999, and this series of blogs describes what he found in 2016. A feature article provides a summary. There are nine community hospitals across Dumfries and Galloway, and I visited the one in Kirkudbright, which is GP led. The […]
Richard Smith: Time for pharmaceutical companies to help improve the publishing of science
There’s a growing consensus that publishing science through journals is a broken system. But who has the power to change it? Those who fund research have most power, which includes pharmaceutical companies. So far they have not exercised this power, but should they? A meeting in London last week organised by Oxford PharmaGenesis addressed this […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Juniper
Milton Keynes was established as a “new town”, to relieve housing congestion in London, 50 years ago on 23 January 1967, an event that I did not think worthy of inclusion in my list of scientific anniversaries in 2017. However, the name of the town has medical resonances. Milton Keynes, which now has around 250 […]