Fiona Godlee on research in the developing world – for whom and by whom?

Most of the delegates have managed to make it to Mali, despite a threatened strike by Air France’s pilots. In the end, by various routes, there are over 1000 of us from 75 countries. Our aim is to focus on efforts to strengthen the ability of developing countries to do research for health, but airlines […]

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Fiona Godlee: Why pharma should not be allowed to fill the gap in patient information

There was one thing we were all agreed on – proposers and opposers alike – at the Great Oxford Debate last week: there’s a big gap in the quality and quantity of information for patients. Where we disagreed – and starkly – was whether the drug industry should be allowed to fill that gap. Yes […]

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Fiona Godlee: Learning safety from other industries

At an international patient safety meeting I attended earlier this month (part of a series, see riskybusiness2008.com), I found myself remembering words from Atul Gawande’s book Complications (if you haven’t read it, I recommend it.) Gawande writes: “We have come to view medicine as both more perfect than it is and less extraordinary than it […]

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Fiona Godlee: Recent advances in clinical medicine, public health, and health policy. Royal College of Physicians and London School of Economics. Athens 20-22 September

Back in Athens. Much cooler than a month ago and the fires on the Peleponese are out. This meeting, arranged by Ian Gilmore and George Kitas of the Royal College of Physicians and Elias Mossialos, director of LSE Health, has an ambitious inter-professional scope but a smallish group of delegates, more than half from the […]

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