Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Within all human hierarchies those lower in the hierarchy have poorer health than those higher up. In high income countries poor people are fatter than rich people, and, although the gradient did initially go the other way in low income countries, it’s now true in them as well. But why? Monkeys can help answer this […]
One of the conclusions of Ben Goldacre’s important book Bad Pharma is that our current system of publishing science is broken. More and more people are reaching that conclusion, and pressure is building to blow apart the present system. Goldacre’s prime concerns are not only that many drug trials are not published, but also that […]
The NHS, UK PLC, and the wider world will all benefit if we have more doctor entrepreneurs willing to take risks and start up companies. Starting up a company can be exhilarating, but it’s also complex and exhausting. Healthbox has been founded to help health start ups, and last week it’s managing director, Nick Rosa, […]
At a meeting in Copenhagen earlier this week Bertalan Mesko was introduced as “the world leader in social media and medicine.” After listening to him and looking at some of his websites I decided that this was not an exaggeration. If you want to be up to the minute on social media and medicine you […]
The two driving principles of the new NHS Commissioning Board are transparency and participation. If they are applied radically then they can transform the NHS, said Tim Kelsey, National Director of Patients and Information for the board, at Monday night’s meeting of the relaunched Cambridge Health Network. He envisions an NHS where patients are empowered […]
The Equator network of guidelines on reporting health research, a hugely valuable resource, has 200 guidelines, but none of them are for case reports. So as case reports seem to be returning to respectability a group of us gathered last week at the University of Michigan to start the process of producing guidelines for publishing […]
In the past month I’ve attended contrasting meetings on the polypill and stratified medicine that leave me wondering about the future of medicine. The problem that the polypill tries to solve is that only about 10% of people in the world get the simple drugs that could dramatically reduce their chances of having a heart […]
Doctors know that many of the patients they treat with drugs will not benefit. Many patients know that too, which may be why some don’t take their drugs. The simple concept behind stratified medicine is that we become smarter at identifying the patients who will benefit. What has long been an aspiration is slowly becoming […]
Peter Wilmshurst is that rare thing—a successful whistleblower. What’s more, he’s a cheerful one, despite having lost £25 000, faced bankruptcy and the loss of his house, and spent every evening, weekend, and his annual leave for three years successfully defending an egregious libel case. Most readers of the BMJ must be familiar with the […]
Cochrane systematic reviews provide perhaps the best evidence available on health, but do they improve the care of patients and shape health policy? This was the question addressed at one of the liveliest sessions at the Cochrane Colloquium in Auckland. Most people are cared for in primary care, but the full Cochrane reviews are useless […]