Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Would you like to contribute to a book on complex chronic disease? The book has been written for the Spanish government, which currently has the presidency of the European Union and wants to draw attention to the importance of complex chronic disease. You probably don’t recognise the term “complex chronic disease,” but it’s actually the […]
The government’s dementia strategy, which promises a memory clinic on every corner rather than a chicken in every pot, is not working. That’s not surprising as it’s the easiest thing in the world to come up with grand sounding strategies but one of the hardest to get them implemented. As the economist Alan Maynard says, […]
The fantasy that doctors are primarily concerned with patients and not much at all with money goes deep and is highly reassuring. Everybody was upset by two health ministers – Enoch Powell and Ken Clarke – observing that almost all of their conversations with doctors’ leaders were about money. […]
I’ve been puzzling for years over how to define health without making much progress, but I thought I might take a step forward by listening to a discussion on the radio about whether philosophy can help you live the good life. […]
About twice a week somebody asks me: “What exactly do you do these days?” Many doctors knew me as the editor of the BMJ, and they have a vague memory that I left to do something disreputable. My brother advises me to answer: “I’m back laying pavements for the council.” That stops further inquiries, he […]
Last week about 30 of us spent 36 hours in The Hague discussing whether we could produce a new definition of health—and eventually deciding that we couldn’t. But we had an interesting time, and I concluded that I would think of health not as a state or a destination but rather as a journey. The […]
Some three million children in Britain are obese, and treating childhood obesity is far from easy. To have any chance of responding adequately to the epidemic of obesity we need to find, firstly, a treatment that works and, secondly, a way to scale it up so that it can be delivered efficiently. Both problems are hard, […]
Perhaps I should have realised from the title, but when I began to read The Book of Dead Philosophers I didn’t expect it to be funny. In fact Simon Critchley’s stories of how “190 or so” philosophers died and some of what they said about death is at times hilarious—as well as rich with meaning. Let’s […]
Slowly but surely the internet is transforming industries—finance, travel, music, entertainment—but so far it has had little impact on public services. But can it transform public services and if so how and when? These were the questions that ran through a day of “cocreation” organized by Patient Opinion, an organisation founded by GP Paul Hodgkin […]
I’ve just been thrown out of the Royal College of Physicians, which has moderately excited me—probably just as much as when I became a fellow. My sin is not paying my fees. So it’s reasonable to expel me, but was it reasonable to charge me in the first place? Let me plead my case. It’s […]