As our measurements and metrics in medicine proliferate and multiply, it is exceedingly tempting to think that our increased ability to measure correlates directly with an increased ability to care or cure . . . but is this really the case? It’s been reasonably well established that just doing a test to “rule out” a […]
Category: Columnists
Richard Smith: What if all the works of Democritus had survived and those of Aristotle been lost
Richard Feynman, the great physicist, conducted a thought experiment in which he asked what one statement would he save if all of scientific knowledge was lost. His answer: “All things are made of atoms–little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Ḥanukkah at Christmas
This year the first day of the Jewish festival Ḥanukkah falls on the first day of Christmas. Call it “Chrismukkah”, if you like. [The letter Ḥ is pronounced like the ch in loch.] This occurs only once every 30 years on average, and this is only the eighth time they have coincided since 1777. The […]
Nick Hopkinson on Steve Biko, the NHS, and the mind of the oppressed
It would have been Steve Biko’s seventieth birthday this weekend. The anti-apartheid leader was beaten to death by the South African Police in a jail cell in 1977. His death was a medical scandal too—doctors acquiesced in his being driven, semi-conscious and chained, the 700 miles from Port Elizabeth to Pretoria. Developing his program of […]
Sian M Griffiths: £1 housing scheme helps tackle health inequalities
Good housing is a prerequisite for good health. When he was constructing the welfare state, William Beveridge named squalor—which he said resulted from a shortage of good houses—as one of the five giants standing in the way of social progress. There is a growing body of evidence which shows a correlation between poor housing and […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Wye speling matturs
Drug names are difficult to remember, pronounce, and spell. For example, which of the following, if any, is the correct spelling? • amitriptylin • amitryptiline • amitriptylline • amytriptyline • amitriptiline One way to find out is to enter the name into PubMed. Here’s what I got when I searched for “amitriptylin”: […]
Richard Smith: The dead journalist and social care
The juxtaposition of an article by a dying (indeed, dead) journalist bemoaning the NHS denying him an expensive cancer drug and a spate of articles illustrating the “crisis in social care” shows well the conundrum facing the British people. I may be the only member of Britain’s “elite” who hadn’t heard of A A Gill, […]
Julian Sheather on why we must retain the Human Rights Act
When we sicken in the UK most of us turn to the NHS for care. The majority of doctors here have also been trained in the NHS. Medicine in the UK is therefore deeply involved with the state. Modern developed states are both powerful and, to an extent, impersonal. They can be an enormous force […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Palindromes
A palindrome reads the same backwards as forwards, from the Greek παλίνδρομος, recurring or running back again, a compound of παλίν, back, and δρόμος, a course or racetrack. Other words that start with palin- include palingenesis (regeneration, rebirth, revival, resuscitation), palinode (originally an ode or song in which the poet retracted a view or sentiment […]
Richard Smith: Rethinking the publication of surgical innovations
A scandal in cardiothoracic research has led Martin Elliott, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Great Ormond Street, to conclude that current methods of publishing surgical innovations are not only inadequate but also shameful. In a Gresham lecture in London recently he presented proposals for improving the sharing of surgical innovations. The scandal The scandal, which is […]