In January this year a hospital pharmacist contacted us after a colleague had questioned a prescription for amlodipine 10 mg four times a day for migraine. She contacted the prescriber, who said he had got the dose from this clinical review about pharmacological prevention of migraine published in The BMJ. […]
Category: Editors at large
Domhnall MacAuley: General practice and social deprivation
A single naked bulb lights the room. Clothes hang over the radiator, there is a cot by the door, and a huge TV in the corner. Just a few worn chairs and a clapped out couch. Feet stick to the carpet. A world worn 19 year old and a distraught infant; hot, flushed, and dribbling. […]
Edward Davies: Pharma is changing. Can doctors say the same?
About 13 years ago I attended my first US mega meeting of doctors. I was there for a research agency, working on behalf of a large well known pharmaceutical company, analysing their marketing campaign for a new drug. From the moment I got off the plane, I was slapped into brutal submission by the advertising […]
Edward Davies: The big bang meeting vs peer review
In the world of oncology, and indeed the world in general, meetings don’t come bigger than that of the American Society for Clinical Oncology. I hesitate to quote a cab driver as a source of fact, but the one I met at Chicago airport told me more than 30,000 delegates were coming through the city […]
Anita Jain: “It’s time for men to deliver”
The infamous Delhi gang rape led to an outpouring of public outrage across the country. It signalled a tipping point in people’s angst with the growing pervasiveness of such incidents. Shaken by the brutality of the act, people took to the streets to question the state of affairs of women’s safety in India. With relative […]
Anita Jain on the need for women’s rights movements to carve out their own space
Last month, women’s rights activists in Mumbai took up a protest along the lines of the “Occupy Men’s Toilets” campaign in China, and demanded more public toilets for women. Last year it was headline news that India has more temples than toilets, so the need is clearly not a new one. In addition to diseases […]
Domhnall MacAuley: No magic answer for Achilles tendinopathy
“Although they are trendy money spinners, best evidence shows little effectiveness”—An attention grabbing subheading to an editorial by Nic Maffulli in the BMJ commenting on an intriguing randomised controlled trial (RCT) from New Zealand on the use of autologus blood injections in treating Achilles tendinopathy. It doesn’t work. […]
Wim Weber on OPEN—the European research project to study publication bias
On 23 and 24 May the final workshop of the OPEN project took place in Freiburg, Germany. OPEN—To Overcome failure to Publish nEgative fiNdings—is an EU funded project to study publication bias in medical research. It brings together research groups from Germany, Italy, France, Croatia, Spain, and the UK, and it aimed to assess the […]
Readers’ editor: An evening with Itchy Sneezy Wheezy
Last week’s print BMJ included a 14 page supplement about BMJ Awards, held a week earlier in London. If you didn’t see it, here’s a link. The BMJ Awards website lists all the winners, along with pictures from the night. The BMJ Awards are now five years old. The event goes from strength to strength. Next […]
Readers’ editor: Free pens and memory sticks
I spent yesterday at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London, talking to readers of the BMJ. The medical school library had organised an open day and a sales colleague had organised a BMJ stand, so I joined him to discuss our plans for the BMJ website with both qualified doctors and medical students. […]