My pursuit of words that twist are repeatedly balked by a desire to comment on the way in which Jeremy Hunt continues to twist and turn over the junior hospital doctors’ contract. Did he really have a change of heart when, after first declining to do so, he belatedly agreed to negotiate, mediated by Acas, […]
Category: Columnists
William Cayley: Is the Good Samaritan the wrong metaphor to use for doctors?
A story from the Christian New Testament has provided the literary namesake for countless medical facilities, as well as legal and ethical principles guiding care for those in need, but it may be the wrong illustration—or at least, not an adequate one. The “Good Samaritan” story is told in the book of Luke to answer […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Keep on twisting
I don’t know why I let Jeremy Hunt, the BMA, and Acas get in the way last week, when I was progressing with my exploration of different types of twisting. As I was saying, several Indo-European roots connoted twisting and turning. I began with UER and then made a start on PLEK, but there’s more […]
Richard Smith: A 45 minute play on death
Caryl Churchill’s 45 minute play on death at the National Theatre begins with people at a drinks party after a funeral. Nobody is much upset. “The waters close over very quickly after a death,” my friend Vitek said to me last week. People talk across each other. There is no real communication. We learn little […]
James Raftery: Cancer drugs fund—consultation on bringing it under NICE
Conflict of interest: the proposals reviewed here are similar to those advocated in a 2014 BMJ editorial “Reforming the Cancer Drugs Fund” to which I was a co-author. I have had no involvement with the development of the proposed policy. The Cancer Drugs Fund continues to pose problems not least a rising spend, up from […]
Richard Smith: Four reasons why we may not be responding in the right way to hypertension in low and middle income countries
Should we be responding to hypertension in low and middle income countries? Of course we should. Hypertension kills 10 million people a year prematurely, and 80% of those deaths occur in low and middle income countries. Less than 5% of people with hypertension in those countries have their blood pressure well controlled, and yet we […]
Richard Smith: Big data, Twitter, the NHS, and the junior doctors’ dispute
Big data, as we all know, is going to save us. Used well it will make health systems solvent, introduce immortality, cool the planet, bring peace in the Middle East, and create a global pandemic of love, health, and happiness. But not yet—as we are still at the beginning. For now its achievements are more […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Conciliatory
The junior doctors (pictured) vote to strike. The BMA seeks to resolve the dispute with Jeremy Hunt through the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service Acas. Not before time. He rejects the suggestion. Brinkmanship, perhaps, or fear of something (losing votes?), or perhaps hoping to destroy the system as an excuse to privatize the NHS? Then […]
Richard Smith: The NHS—a terrible thought
There is great reluctance in Britain to consider any other kind of funding for the NHS apart from taxation, but we are surely close to a time when we will have to consider it. This morning I awoke with the thought, which felt terrible, that funding through taxation is a straitjacket that is causing increasing […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Terrorism
The Latin word “terror,” from the hypothetical Indo-European root TER, implying trembling, meant “the fact or quality of inspiring terror” (Oxford Latin Dictionary) and a person or thing that causes terror. Territare meant to constrain by fear, to try to scare, or, as we would now say, to terrorize. From “terror” we get such words […]