Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
When Willie Ramirez was admitted to hospital in Florida his Spanish speaking family said he was intoxicado. There is no exact equivalent of intoxicado in English. It doesn’t mean intoxicated, but that’s how it was translated by the bilingual person who interpreted for the medical staff. Willie was diagnosed as having taken a deliberate overdose. […]
Harry Burns, the chief medical officer of Scotland and one of medicine’s philosophers, has spent a lot of time trying to understand why Scotland has such poor health and what might be done. He shared his thinking at a meeting in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary last week. Scotland has not always had poor health. For most […]
All the political parties and those at the top of the NHS see an important role for entrepreneurs in the latest version of the health service. Those labouring within the service are less convinced, and entrepreneurs have great difficulty finding any customers. The NHS Commissioning Board (or CB, as we are learning to call it) […]
There is a sense that if you are not working at something that helps counter climate change (or climate disruption, as it should be called) then you are wasting your time. You are Nero, and Rome is burning. Those of us who work on non communicable disease (NCD) are “lucky” in that most of what […]
Should hubris be a disease, asks my friend Faith. After a second I conclude, “Of course. It’s perhaps the most dangerous disease of all in that it destroys not just individuals, but potentially our whole species.” I think of hubris simply as men acting as gods (even though I don’t believe in gods). But Wikipedia […]
Climate change will soon destroy us. Global poverty is increasing. Non-communicable disease is sweeping the planet. Communicable disease is far from defeated and may re-emerge in new and terrible forms at any moment. Mothers are continuing to die in childbirth. War is now endemic, and nowhere, literally nowhere is safe. The tentacles of the pharmaceutical […]
Cognisant of the short time that ministers are in post, Jeremy Hunt, decided when he became Secretary of State of Health, that to make a difference he should have only four priorities. They are, he told the Cambridge Health Network on Wednesday night, improving the quality of care, putting dementia higher on the agenda, reducing […]
Dying Matters is an organisation that aims to raise awareness of dying, death, and bereavement, and this is Dying Awareness Week. The organisation exists because of the mass denial of death in our society that leaves people ill prepared for dying and death and contributes to so many people dying badly. I’ve joined Dying Matters […]
I’m an enthusiastic follower of the NHS Sustainable Development Unit, its director, David Pencheon, and its important mission of reducing NHS carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, but like all organisations it needs to pay attention to small as well as big things to succeed. That’s why I tell this (not very) sad story. I […]
“If you want to get on in life, dear boy, don’t be too original. Originality is a curse. People won’t understand you. They’ll feel threatened. You may end up burnt at the stake.” I tried to find a quote from a sage making these points, but I couldn’t—so I made one up myself. I’m meditating […]