So it’s the end of week two since the Healthcare Commission report into Stafford Hospital became public knowledge, and the toll is showing. It shows on the faces of staff who feel battered, it shows on the faces of managers who look beleaguered, and most importantly it shows on the faces of our patients who […]
Category: Guest writers
Philipp du Cros dreams of a rapid point of care test for tuberculosis
In my work with Médecins Sans Frontières I constantly face dilemmas when trying to decide whether a patient has tuberculosis or not. In the countries where we work, diagnosis for tuberculosis still relies on the use of sputum microscopy, a test developed over 100 years ago, that will detect only 45-65% of cases when performed […]
Lord John Rea on tackling malaria in Uganda
My first visit to Uganda was in 1965 – the Halcyon days after independence when King Freddie the Kabaka of Buganda still ruled. I flew from Nigeria, where I was working as a doctor, to attend a seminar on child nutrition at Makerere University. Afterwards, I spent three weeks with my wife and three young […]
Tauseef Mehrali on ladybirds and tree-hugging
“Two hours – two f***ing hours!” he screams as he bludgeons his partner to a pulp in front of her four children for returning home late from the shops. The onlookers are reduced to a stunned silence. I look around, see their disbelief and share it. The fuming perpetrator is Simon, played by Ray Winstone, […]
Richard Feinmann on volunteering after retirement
What to do when you are a sexagenarian physician who has retired from hospital practice with 40 years in the NHS under your belt and golf/Sudoku not really appealing? Well, my health visitor wife and I applied to Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and I am writing this from a hospital in Kampala, Uganda, where I have […]
Matiram Pun backs web-only publication
Journals historically started as print publications and, after reaching the library, were catalogued and arranged systematically for readers to find articles easily. Sometimes academics were confused and so would ask library staff to find the journal or articles in it. […]
Richard Smith asks who is the E O Wilson of medicine?
A friend has written to me asking whom I think might be the “E O Wilson of Medicine,” and I’m stumped. Perhaps some readers of the BMJ have never heard of E O Wilson. For those that haven’t he is a Harvard biologist who has twice won the Pullitzer Prize and who invented “consilience,” the […]
Julian Sheather on men, women, and chocolate
Once upon a long time ago I worked for a small charity that was much concerned with the plight of indigenous peoples. My role in the cause was a small one – it was a summer job photocopying press cuttings and grant applications in a pleasant, high-ceilinged room in a large house in West London […]
Julian Sheather on opening the data floodgates
The Coroners and Justice Bill is currently in Committee stage in the UK House of Commons. Section 152 of the Bill amends the Data Protection Act. It gives ministers of state the power to enable the sharing of any data that falls within their sphere of responsibility. It defines data sharing as both “the disclosure […]
William Lee: A question of proportionality?
On Wednesday 25th February Baroness Warnock spoke at the Maudsley Philosophy Group. Her topic was, ‘Assisted Dying: Should the law be changed?’. The Maudsley is a psychiatric hospital in south London which adjoins and collaborates with the Institute of Psychiatry. Baroness Warnock, now in her eighties, is an extraordinarily accomplished person. […]