The massive global hunt for genes for common diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and type 2 diabetes, has raised huge expectations. The idea that knowledge of disease genes can remarkably improve prediction of risk, and lead to better ways of prevention and targeted treatment has excited the world, and resulted in a pouring of […]
Category: Guest writers
Behrooz Astaneh: Guest authorship – a vicious cycle
The ethics of guest authorship in biomedical publishing have been discussed for many years. A recent blog on this topic by Dr Barbour on the COPE website says that in dissertations by Swedish medical students, there are names of authors that did not have any significant contribution to the study. […]
Martin McShane: Specialised
Commissioning of specialised services is done across the region. I had to drive to another county for the meeting where we were going to decide what to invest in. These are low volume high cost services currently costing about £600 million for our region. Historically it has had double digit inflation. That isn’t sustainable. […]
Louise Kenny: Gateshead to Guatemala
Strangely enough, I think I may have found it a more difficult transition returning back to work in the UK, than the initial challenge of starting work in Guatemala. Working in Guatemala was shocking for a number of reasons, but as I grew to understand the system and the culture, I found myself working harder, […]
Richard Smith: Why is the health service so hopeless with domestic violence?
I’ve always thought that death, although universal, was the great taboo for health services, but now I’ve discovered something that seems to cause even greater difficulty for clinicians – domestic violence. […]
Martin McShane: Tick
In 2008 the National Patient Safety Agency set a deadline for acute trusts to implement the safer surgery checklist. By? Well, now actually. If you don’t know what the checklist is about it then read Atul Gawande’s latest book or a review of it. It would appear from a survey done by the Patient Safety […]
Georg Röggla on avalanches
The avalanche danger level was the second highest possible this week in most parts of the Alps. But the warning did not help: six alpinists died in avalanches within 24 hours in Austria. Although the scientific knowledge about the pathophysiology of being buried under an avalanche has improved, and the number of hospitals with technical equipment […]
Muza Gondwe: Risky media sensationalizations and my African death risk
What do risky media sensationalizations and my African death risk have in common? They are the remaining mental imprints of the two lectures I have attended so far in the Darwin Risk series at the University of Cambridge. In the first lecture titled, “Trying to quantify our uncertainty” by Professor David Spiegelhalter, I learnt a […]
Richard Smith asks: Can we create a global network of mentors?
I’m on a plane flying home from Nigeria, where I’ve been participating in a workshop on writing and publishing in journals, reading scientific papers, and encouraging evidence based practice. I had a wonderful time. The workshop had around 100 participants, and they were exuberant and highly responsive. The debate was intense, and some struggled with […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: To Haiti, with solidarity from Bangladesh
Natural disasters, a history of corruption, high population density, and extreme poverty. Am I talking about Haiti or Bangladesh? When the 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Port au Prince and brought devastation, the usual providers of humanitarian aid raced to the scene. But this time Bangladesh, long the recipient of such emergency services, is on the giving end. A 30 […]