The BMJ Today: Mammography wars and other conflicts

Anyone who questions the value of breast screening programmes must still feel a bit like Galileo did when he championed heliocentrism. To many people, including parts of the medical establishment, it seems counterintuitive to suggest that mammography might not be that effective and could lead to overdiagnosis. The evidence might be building, but it still […]

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The BMJ Today: Medical neutrality, weight loss, and The BMJ Awards

“Doctors should never be punished for following their professional duty of providing care without discrimination.” So concludes a letter we’ve just published that condemns Turkey’s government for passing legislation that directly conflicts with the fundamental ethical principle of medical neutrality. The law restricts healthcare professionals’ treatment of injured protestors, and has been viewed as a […]

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The BMJ Today: Insurance and inequalities

How can health inequities be tackled when their causes lie beyond the control of the health sector or even national governments? This was the question that a report by the Lancet-University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health sought to answer and that Guddi Vijaya Rani Singh scrutinises in her blog. “We must be careful […]

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The BMJ Today: HPV vaccine, chemotherapy, and psychiatry in the Gaza strip

Another evidence booster for the quadrivalent vaccine today. Controlled clinical studies have shown it almost completely prevents high grade cervical abnormalities, and now a BMJ paper has confirmed that even in the messy, real world it confers a risk reduction of 46% for these, and also of 34% for other cervical abnormalities. Whilst this is […]

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