Scientific publishing is no longer just about printing journals but increasingly includes online publishing, broadcasting, and creating online communities. A talk I attended given by Timo Hannay at University College London on 15 July demonstrated just how much scientific publishing has evolved and in how many ways it will still change. It was entitled “The […]
Category: Editors at large
Domhnall MacAuley on a dead certainty
So, who gets cancer? Have you a mental image? With heart disease, our classic picture is of an overweight hypertensive smoker, living between the pub and the chip shop. But, you rarely hear that someone “looks a likely candidate for cancer”. […]
Ed Davies: Medical workforce planning
The BMA’s annual representative meeting can often feel a bit like Groundhog Day. The chairman kicks off events with some combative rhetoric about the government, the usual suspects speak in turn about concerns over NHS privatisation, and things get a little bit heated during the ethics section as rival groups exchange blows over topics such […]
Annabel Ferriman on questions for Margaret Chan
The spread of A/H1N1 flu has propelled Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, into the limelight. On 11 June she was on television and radio programmes across the world, declaring that “the world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic” and that “further spread is considered inevitable” […]
Domhnall MacAuley on shared decision making
Democracy means involvement in decision making but it may not always lead to the best outcomes. With this simple analogy, Gerd Gigerenzer (Berlin), captured the potential hazards of clinical shared decision making in his keynote address to the 5th International Shared Decision Making Conference in Boston (June 14-17). […]
Domhnall MacAuley on epicurean epidemiology
Autres pays, autres coeurs? Part of the title of an early paper highlighting the relationship between dietary patterns, risk factors and ischaemic heart disease could have been the title of this meeting. Cardiovascular epidemiologists from Europe and beyond gathered in the land of the Ulster Fry to discuss the Mediterranean diet, the French paradox, and […]
Domhnall MacAuley on public health in Hong Kong
When your fellow passengers wear surgical masks, you complete a health declaration with your landing card and, pass through a line of heat detectors before passport control, you know public health is taken seriously. Travelling to the WONCA 2009 (World Organization of National Colleges, Academies) Asia Pacific conference in Hong Kong was always going to be […]
Harvey Marcovitch on who are the Philistines now?
I have reached the age when I look forward to a literary festival more than a rock concert. I relish the pre-opening canapés, the excited buzz around the bookstall, the effusiveness of the organisers as they greet their guests, the agreed myth that the authors are there to entertain us rather than sell their work. […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
An extra 2000 GPs were promised when the Minister of Health in Norway heard Barbara Starfield speak on a previous visit to Scandinavia. Roar Maagaard, in quoting this figure in his introduction, was sorry that the Danish Minister for Health and Prevention, who opened the conference, left before her keynote address at the 16th Nordic […]
Tessa Richards: Paying for health in Europe
Two years ago health ministers in the Czech Republic decided to focus on the financial sustainability of health systems during their six months at the EU presidency helm. Was this foresight? Did the ministers know what the bankers did not- that economic Armageddon was round the corner? Either way, the financial crisis was certainly concentrating […]