Combusted tobacco cigarette use causes about six million deaths per year and has been projected to cause one billion deaths in the 21st century. [1] The risk of tobacco smoking is very high (50% risk of death before age 70). [2, 3] However, the risk of death from using electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes)—or electronic nicotine delivery […]
Category: US healthcare
Simon Chapman: When will the tobacco industry apologise for its galactic harms?
Last week, four US tobacco companies finally reached agreement with the US Department of Justice to fund large scale corrective advertising about five areas of tobacco control. Each advertisement will include the statement that the companies “deliberately deceived the American public.” The case against the companies commenced in 1999 and saw a 2006 judgment by […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—20 January 2014
NEJM 16 Jan 2014 Vol 370 201 Developing and marketing a new drug is a tricky business, but it can be a very lucrative one. AiCuris is a company I hadn’t heard of before, but it seems to specialize in antiviral drugs. For such a company, herpes simplex 2 infection presents a huge market opportunity: […]
Carolyn Thomas: Why physicians must stop saying: “we are all patients”
While noodling around on Linked In one day, I was pleased to notice that the professional networking site has some member groups discussing patient engagement. I’m a heart attack survivor, a blogger, and a women’s health activist—so I also consider myself a fairly engaged patient. Maybe I should drop in on one of these groups […]
Stephen E Lankenau: Legalising cannabis for recreational use in the US
Colorado became the first state in the United States to allow the sale of cannabis for recreational use on 1 January 2014. Colorado residents aged 21 years or older may now purchase up to one ounce of cannabis from designated stores around the state (non-residents may purchase up to a quarter of an ounce). Washington […]
Richard Smith: NCD among the bottom billion
My main job these days means thinking about non-communicable disease (NCD) in low and middle income countries (LMIC), but a paper in the Lancet suggests that I may be thinking in the wrong way. It’s always hard to shift your mental model dramatically, but perhaps I need to do so. I and the 11 centres […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—13 January 2014
JAMA Internal Medicine Jan 2014 Vol 174 I was amazed at the richness of the contents of JAMA Intern Med this week, but then I sadly realized that the journal has changed from being a fortnightly treat to being a monthly one. I had been warned this would happen; it’s a natural consequence of online […]
William Cayley: Evidence based medicine—it’s time to be critical
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” goes the aphorism—and so would say any who trust complacently in the exponential growth of “evidence based” this or that in medicine. Des Spence, for one, disagrees. In a recent BMJ editorial he argues evidence based medicine (EBM) is broken, it is “now the problem, fuelling overdiagnosis and […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—6 January 2014
NEJM 26 Dec 2013 Vol 369 2481 There was no let up in the American journals over what they call the holiday period, and the NEJM offered a trial of a new GSK influenza vaccine to our attention on Boxing Day. It is a quadrivalent vaccine containing inactivated influenza B virus of both main lineages, […]
Anne Winter: The drive for universal health coverage
In 2000, the whole of sub Saharan Africa had fewer telephone lines than Manhattan, and less than 3% of rural villages had access to land line telephones. Six years later, 45% had GSM coverage and connectivity is now a given across the continent. So it may be with healthcare. As momentum gathers around efforts to […]