JAMA 8 May 2013 Vol 309 1903 When an implanted cardioverter defibrillator goes off inside you, you are sure to feel deeply shocked: whereas, for others, watching you drop dead might be even more shocking. One needs to strike a balance. That was the purpose of the ADVANCE III (Avoid Delivering Therapies for Nonsustained Arrhythmias […]
JAMA 1 May 2013 Vol 309 This week’s JAMA is devoted to child health. This was a mistake, because although children are generally interesting, health generally is not. A study from Quebec tries out various doses of vitamin D in babies and finds you can only get to a reliably high value by using doses […]
Does blogging help patients cope with the lengthy and toxic treatment for multidrug resistant tuberculosis? Do humanitarian responses to crises fail to take sufficient account of the plight of elderly people? Is giving money more effective than giving food supplements to tackle child malnutrition? And will global health expert and Ted Talks alumnus Hans Rosling […]
People say India is the land of frugal medicine, and a decade ago I would have agreed. But the advent of technology coincided with the rapid growth of private hospital chains in the Indian medical sector. Healthcare has become costly, with expenditure on everything including medicines becoming huge. This brings me straight to the most […]
Each year the BMJ runs an online reader survey. The survey is mainly multiple choice but there is also a free text question where we ask readers: “What single improvement to bmj.com would make the most difference to you?” Every year the most popular response is “Make it free.” There are other recurring responses to […]
In 2009, Obama convened senior politicians in the Oval Office to discuss one magazine article: why were there Medicare costs of $15,000 per person per year in the Texan town of McAllen, when a neighbouring town had costs of $7,500 per person per year? Especially when the hospitals in McAllen were performing worse than its […]
Émilie du Châtelet, the French aristocrat, philosopher, lover of Voltaire, and interpreter of Newton, had highly original (and possibly even correct) ideas on the route to happiness. Those who are tired of the drab and soulless maxims of today’s self-help guides might like to try her more exciting advice. Something that conflicts immediately with today’s […]
JAMA 24 Apr 2013 Vol 309 1691 Last week I welcomed the imminent arrival of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) because it would classify every human being as insane, and so should provide the world with a good opportunity to step back and decide what psychiatry is really about. This open […]
In 2012, MSF projects in several countries saw an important increase in cases of malaria, and a prolonged peak in areas of seasonal transmission. More than six emergency interventions were launched to fight this increase. While the past decade has seen drastic improvements in the response to malaria (rapid diagnostic tests, affordable artemisinin based combination […]
As a follower of Gandhi, I was always fascinated by the subtitle of his autobiography—”Experiments with truth.” Gandhi noted, “Far be it for me to claim any degree of perfection for these experiments. I claim for them nothing more than does a scientist who, though he conducts his experiments with the utmost accuracy, forethought, and […]