Should doctors avoid fame or notoriety? More than 10 years ago I achieved a modest mixture of both after being asked to leave a public house one Sunday evening for no other reason than being a member of “a group of men.” In the immediate aftermath of the event whilst shopping in the local supermarket, […]
Category: Columnists
Richard Smith: 14 years at the helm of NICE
“You’ll do, but you’re not my first choice,” said Frank Dobson then Secretary of State for Health when he appointed Mike Rawlins as the first chairman of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) in 1999. Later the blunt speaking Dobson was asked whether NICE would work: “Probably not—but it’s worth a bloody good try.” […]
Richard Smith: Nestlé—a force for good or ill?
Nestlé, one of the world’s largest food companies, sells 1.2 billion products a day. This gives it huge potential for good or ill in a world where a billion people are undernourished, more than 2 billion are deficient in micronutrients (iron, iodine, zinc, and vitamin A), and 1.6 billion are overweight. So which is it, […]
Julian Sheather: Should doctors treat violent or abusive patients?
During the years I have been talking to doctors about medical ethics, I have often heard it said that when push comes to shove, the rights dice are loaded in favour of patients. All this talk of patient autonomy is all very well but what about the autonomy of doctors? What about our rights? With […]
Richard Smith: The NHS and the private sector: a 70 year conversation
We’ve been having this conversation since at least 1945, said a member of the audience at this week’s Cambridge Health Network meeting on partnerships between the NHS and the private sector. The dominant rhetoric now is that partnership between the NHS and the private sector will be essential for improving health and generating wealth for […]
Desmond O’Neill: A sad day for human rights in Ireland
It is perhaps stating the obvious that the best mode for exercising human rights is while still alive: as the Vikings stated rather bluntly in their eddaic saga Hávamál, “there is nothing the dead can do” (1). So it was with some sadness that I read, and re-read, the submission of the Irish Commission of […]
Pritpal S Tamber: We don’t know what the NHS is for
Last week the people of Leeds successfully halted the NHS’ plans to reform children’s heart services, which included moving surgery to a neighbouring city. It was a great victory for the citizenry. According to the High Court, the campaign group, Save Our Surgery (SOS), raised legitimate concerns about the decision making process by which the […]
Paul Glasziou: Can’t buy me love … but can money buy me clinical quality?
When the Beatles claimed that they “don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love,” they did not provide scientific references. While we might hope that statements of fact or causation in popular songs are based on a systematic review of the controlled trials, my guess is that we are a long way […]
Richard Smith: Research and the Arab Spring
The Arab world, despite its proud intellectual history and some of its countries being among the richest in the world, produces little research. Now the Arab Spring has shaken the whole region, and researchers in the Arab world think that the time has come to relate to the social earthquake and to promote research for […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Beating on the glass ceiling
In July 2012, Anne Marie Slaughter, who is a professor at Princeton, resigned from her high profile position as the director of policy planning for the US State Department in Washington in order to spend more time with her teenage sons. Her resignation was accompanied by her well circulated article, “Why women still can’t have […]