Web 2.0—the social web—has the potential to improve global health greatly and to solve complex problems in health science—as it has already done in particle physics. I heard this message at a conference on global health in Geneva last week, but I also heard that the barriers to these potential achievements are social and cultural, […]
In a recent article in the BMJ Paul Biegler returns to a familiar theme in some of the more reflective literature on depression. Should an episode of depression be seen primarily as a biochemical problem, a problem of brain chemistry, or is it a problem tied to the individual’s understanding of the world? […]
I love words. I love their subtlety, their precision, their power, their influence. For me, they represent the embodiment of our thoughts and so our intellects. The abuse of words hurts as it demeans our minds; likewise the failure to respect words riles as it undermines that most precious of commodities – communication. So what […]
Jannik Boehmfeld is dead. He is six years old, a year younger than my eldest son. He is lying on his back. His mouth is open but his eyes are shut. […]
By September this year it is almost certain that a new system will be in place for determining how much the NHS will pay for its brand name medicines. For over half a century government and industry have used a complex formula to calculate the overall returns drug companies can make on their sales to […]
Recently a colleague of mine, a GP, told me she was taking a three-month sabbatical. She was going to sit on an island in the Mediterranean and do very little more than read novels. Reading novels, she said, made her a better doctor. After I had shrugged off the spasm of envy, I started to […]
Congratulations with the first BMJ on recycled paper. Being an old editor myself it is nice to see that the usual high quality of illustrations is unchanged in spite of the recycled paper, So no downsizing of quality and a better output for the global climate. Great. […]
Earlier this year I declined an invitation to fly all expenses from Sydney to Geneva to speak for 15 minutes at an international cancer conference. There was a hole in my calendar. Geneva is a hop from Lyon, where I have good friends. I have a son in London who I haven’t seen for a […]
People in Bangladesh get 80% of their healthcare from the private sector. Across Sub-Saharan Africa it’s 60%, and the proportion is increasing. The poorer people are the more likely they are to receive private care, and the middle classes consume more publicly funded care than the poor. […]
On 26 January 2007 a regulation and amending regulation on medicinal products for paediatric use came into force in the EU, which requires that medicines are ethically researched and made available for children aged 0-17 years. […]