Tuesday 20 September. Day two 7.10 Traffic is gridlocked near the UN building because so many streets are shut. Obama hits the UN today—not unfortunately the NCD meeting. […]
Richard Smith: UN meeting on NCDs – day two
Category: Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: A diary of the UN meeting
Monday 19 September. Day one 7.10 I arrive at the junction of 47 Street East and 2nd Avenue to meet the Pepsico people who are holding a breakfast meeting in the UN dining room. I meet several cronies that I haven’t seen for a long while and reflect traitorously that global health is maybe like […]
Richard Smith: A diary of the UN meeting on NCDs
Saturday 17 September. Day minus two 17.20 Arrive in New York. A bigger queue than ever at immigration. Do they really want visitors? After an hour I reach the booth. “When were you in Pakistan?” “Just over a year ago.” “What do you do?” “I run a programme in developing countries working on heart disease […]
Richard Smith: Should there be easier access to new drugs?
There is increasing pressure for drug regulators to provide quicker access to new drugs. The pressure comes from doctors, patients, politicians, and the drug industry. What is likely to happen? Will patients get quicker access to new drugs? A month ago an oncologist proposed in the New England Journal of Medicine that oncologists should be able […]
Richard Smith: Improving dementia care
The recent meeting of the Cambridge Health Network on dementia swung between pessimism and optimism, reflecting perhaps the national feeling. Dementia, said several speakers, is where cancer was 30 years ago and HIV 20 years ago: feared, not talked about, neglected, and thought untreatable. But there’s every reason why the same progress can be made […]
Richard Smith: Clinicians support a review of mammography
Five weeks ago I wrote about the difficulty I was having in finding somebody to speak in favour of mammography at a conference on controversies in breast cancer. I feared that the establishment was adopting a strategy of non-engagement in the face of what seems to be growing criticism of mammography. Now that the conference […]
Richard Smith: Communicating with patients about ductal carcinoma in situ
Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a condition we don’t understand. We don’t know its significance, how to describe it, and how to treat it. Worse, we may have created it. Its incidence in the US in 1975 was 1.87 per 100 000; now it’s 32.5. During that time there has been no drop in […]
Richard Smith: Let the tobacco company see the data
Philip Morris International, a tobacco company, is using the Freedom of Information Act to request data from research conducted at Stirling University into why young people start smoking. The university is resisting. I think that it is wrong to do so. I’m sure that this view will seem outrageous to many BMJ readers, and I […]
Richard Smith: How much are you giving to the poor?
Would you give $1000 to stop a child drowning? Almost certainly. Why then are you not giving all the $1000 you can spare to save the lives of the 9 million children who die every year before their fifth birthday? The moral imperative is the same, says the philosopher Peter Singer. I learnt of this […]
Richard Smith: Zero based healthcare
You may have heard of zero based budgeting where an organisation starts from the assumption that nothing that was in last year’s budget will automatically be in next year’s and instead starts with a blank sheet. It’s a good way to think what is really essential and what adds most value. My friend, Ian Morrison, […]