Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Martin Shkreli is the man who became infamous through buying the rights to Darapim (pyrethamine) and raising the price by 5000% from $13.50 to $750 per pill. There is, I suggest, an inescapable logic to his move that Hillary Clinton described as “outrageous.” Pyrethamine has been around since 1959 and used, usually in combination, to […]
Peer review is faith not evidence based, but most scientists believe in it as some people believe in the Loch Ness monster. Research into peer review has mostly failed to show benefit but has shown a substantial downside (slow, expensive, largely a lottery, wasteful of scientific time, fails to detect most errors, rejects the truly […]
Hans Holbein produced his Dance of Death in Basle in 1526, mainly because he needed the money. Pictures of the dance of death were fashionable, featuring on the walls of cemeteries, and people wanted their own pictures. The pictures have been reproduced many times in many forms since then, and the latest version is a […]
STPs (Sustainability and Transformation Plans) are the device that it is hoped will save the NHS in England by dramatically improving efficiency and allowing NHS bodies to balance their budgets. They are being drawn up in the 44 “footprints” of England and are intended to cover acute hospitals, mental health, community services, and social care. […]
“What,” a Finnish journalist asks me, “should a patient ask before entering a clinical trial?” That’s a good question, I think, as on my feet I try to answer the question. So here’s an attempt at an answer. She asked me the question because I’d been saying that much that is published in medical journals […]
In order to improve patient outcomes the NHS badly needs to collect data on all that is happening, analyse it intelligently, and present the information to clinicians and managers in an understandable and actionable form. That was the central message from Keith McNeil, who recently became chief clinical information officer health and social care for […]
Australia, like Britain, pushed hard for more flexible working in the labour market in the 80s, and all political parties and trade unions supported it because they assumed that it would both boost productivity and give workers more control of their lives. More control, it was thought, would improve health. But is more flexible working […]
The Germans probably have a more precise word for it, but it’s close to schadenfreude as an outsider to watch a professional group agonise over who they are, whether they matter, whether their methods are adequate, and whether they are missing something important. I had this experience in Bristol last week as a gaggle of […]
Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon, wanted badly to understand life and its meaning, and he knew that to do so he would need to understand death. So when in his 30s he developed a cancer that he knew would kill him, he thought (and subsequently wrote): “Shouldn’t terminal illness, then, be the perfect gift to that […]
A challenge to all health systems is how best to manage “high need, high cost patients,” a term developed by the Commonwealth Fund. Its president, David Blumenthal, discussed the best response in last week’s annual health lecture of Imperial College’s Institute of Global Health Innovation. The first reason for caring about such patients is that […]