Because the House of Commons won’t touch end of life issues with a bargepole the House of Lords is the place to watch. So I went to hear the inaugural Elson Ethics Lecture, given by Lord Richard Harries of Pentregarth, on the ethics of assisted dying.(Held at Windsor Castle, we entered via the Henry VIII […]
Category: Editors at large
Domhnall MacAuley: Of mice and real people
Do you dither with your mouse? Who would have thought there could be any new angles on consultation analysis! Simon de Lusignan (St Georges, University of London) had some new insights in his keynote address at NAPCRG (North American Primary Care Research Group). […]
Domhnall MacAuley on unexpected outcomes
You have got to do something. Young mothers and their babies living in socially deprived areas do poorly. Isolated, unprepared, and hard to reach; the obvious way to help is through their peers. Why bother with research. It’s obvious. Just implement it. […]
David Payne on hypoxia, Everest-style
Dan Martin undresses in 20-knot winds beneath the Everest summit to prepare for a femoral artery blood sample and muscle biopsy while a team of sherpas look on, entertained by what they see. The critical care anaesthetist and his three colleagues ended up on the top of the world’s highest peak two years ago as […]
Peter Lapsley: Degrees of care
There have been mixed messages from the Patients Association in response to the announcement of plans for nursing in England to become an all-graduate profession. Writing in The Times on 12 November, the Association’s director, Katherine Murphy, said the move had “sent out all the wrong messages, as it has become more important to write […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Excellence in Practice. RCGP Annual National Primary Care Conference.
Are you an apple, a pear, or even a melon? Metabolic risk is less if you have the body profile of a pear rather than an apple. If you are shaped like a melon, it is definitely time for a serious diet. You may not have noticed, however, that you are now one of the […]
Harvey Marcovitch: ‘O wad some power the giftie gie us’
It’s nice to know how others see us. Several weeks ago, a journal editor based in Europe asked my opinion on a contentious paper he had agreed to publish, had posted online, but about which he now had concerns. I told him that I did not have the scientific expertise to provide a thorough review […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Exercise is medicine
Fergie lost it with the referee. The Manchester United manager’s public criticism of the referee’s fitness in their recent match against Sunderland made headlines. Although subsequently making a personal apology he did raise the more general issue of referee’s fitness. Perhaps it was because he knew about the long established referee fitness programme in Scotland […]
David Payne: Open access and the editor’s choice
A management consultant friend confessed last week that despite advising many media company clients about their digital strategy, he had little interest in Web 2:0 and social networking, shunned the TV when he got home, and ate dinner with his wife while BBC Radio 3 played in the background. […]
Harvey Marcovitch: a flea-market hunter-gatherer
BMJ bloggers are in the habit of going to exotic places to listen to exciting lectures. In my time I’ve done my share of all that but a few weeks ago my medical education leapt ahead in an unlikely place – the Malvern Giant Flea Market. In a subsidiary role as my antique dealer wife’s […]