At this year’s European Health Forum Gastein, the wannabe Davos for health, a call went out for “stronger leadership on health.” Europe needs health ministers who can advocate to protect the health of its citizens as effectively as their counterparts in finance and industry speak up for and guard it’s economic interests. Tweets from the […]
Category: Editors at large
Edward Davies: The assassination of JFK and cholesterol
The American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions have rolled into Dallas this week and the city is awash with two conversations: whether the latest cholesterol guidelines will result in the gross over-prescription of statins to the healthy masses, and the assassination of JFK which happened here 50 years ago this week. And while these two disparate […]
Edward Davies: Open data – are you a great big hypocrite?
During the Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association I spoke to several people and attended a session with several speakers on the importance of open data. On the availability of patient level data, every talk and conversation has had the same two competing threads: 1) Making data more open is hugely important to the […]
Edward Davies: What’s the point of all this? Existential angst at the AAMC
What’s the point of all this? I ask not as a suicidal prelude or remark of self-indulgent philosophy, but after two days at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) annual meeting in Philadelphia, I am finding myself asking, what is our endgame here? As conference delegates, as academics, as doctors, as a research journal—what’s […]
Trish Groves: Postpublication review—what role should journals play?
The National Center for Biotechnology Information of the US National Library of Medicine has emerged from the US shutdown with a new service: PubMed Commons. It’s a system for commenting on published articles, though at this stage it’s running as a closed pilot. Hilda Bastian of PubMed Health reckons it could become “one of the […]
Annabel Ferriman: Which doctor was happiest on 26 May, 1989?
Never let it be said that doctors are a homogeneous group. Quizzing doctors over the last few months about their hopes, fears, inspirations, and aspirations, the BMJ discovered an infinite variety of opinions. Take politics, for example. We asked each of them to name the best and worst health secretaries in their lifetime. We discovered […]
Edward Davies: How health is being hit by the US shutdown
The closure of Panda Cam at the Smithsonian National Zoo may be the highest profile casualty of the government shutdown in the US, but with a third week edging ever closer, some of the emerging consequences are a cause for considerably more concern. The nature of a shutdown means a comprehensive national picture is difficult […]
Tiago Villanueva: The obesity epidemic in Mexico
I recently learned that about 38% of the calories consumed by pregnant women in Mexico comes from the consumption of sugary drinks, like sodas. Mexico also has the highest consumption of Coca-cola per capita of anywhere else in the world. Not surprisingly, Mexico also has the highest growth of obesity rates in the world. Mexico’s […]
Sophie Cook: The pitfalls of consultation skills models
Have GPs become too pre-occupied with consultation skills models? According to Roger Neighbour, author of “The inner consultation” a book familiar to most generations of GPs, while consultation models are a helpful guide, the key to being a good consulter lies not only in the technique of the consultation, but in the ability to listen […]
Edward Davies: Health and politics: time to end the filibuster
The machinations behind the current attempt to defund Obamacare are politically complicated and have a prelude several years long. The evolving story on the federal budget and the rights and wrongs of both it and the Affordable Care Act are well covered elsewhere, but as I type this Senator Ted Cruz is entering the 20th […]