The smell of formaldehyde will never leave me. On my first day as a medical student, in anatomy class, six of us crowded around a dead body, scalpels in hands, waiting to make the first cut. On my university entry form, like everyone else I had proudly stated that I wanted to “help people.” However […]
Category: US healthcare
Edward Davies: Patient charges would fundamentally undermine the NHS
Patient charges have featured in the British press in recent weeks after Malcolm Grant, the head of NHS England, raised their spectre last month. Until recently I was undecided about patient charging. There’s mixed evidence and obvious downsides, but health spending is a bottomless pit, and £5 judiciously applied here or there seems like a […]
Suchita Shah: First responders—a note from Boston
It is 11.59 pm and there is an eerie silence. All afternoon, sirens were wailing relentlessly outside my window, pushing through Red Sox traffic to reach Boylston Street ten minutes round the corner where, at around three o’clock, two explosions hit the city. Today (15th April 2013) is Patriot’s Day, a commemoration of the opening […]
Desmond O’Neill: Fresh approaches to long term care medicine in Washington, DC
Washington in spring is a visual treat, the spectacular arrays of cherry trees in bloom adding a frothy filigree to the sober magnificence of the iconic National Mall. Throw in blue skies and crisp spring weather, and it is not surprising that crowds flock to its Cherry Blossom Festival at weekends in March and April. […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Research misconduct, actually
This month the open access journal with the highest impact factor: PLoS Med (short for Public Library of Science Medicine) will publish a set of articles on research misconduct. The main articles are broken down into research misconduct in high-income countries and research misconduct in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). I am second author […]
Elizabeth Loder: Inventing disease and pushing pills
The recent 2013 Selling Sickness conference in Washington, DC was chock full of fascinating speakers. In an earlier blog I discussed my participation in a panel discussion at the conference, and Rachel Hendrick has also blogged about the meeting. It was difficult to choose from the topics on offer during the two day gathering, and […]
Tony Delamothe: TED 2013
The 29th annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, started as I remember several previous TEDs began: with two men with newly published books to sell proposing a future that was going to be either terrible or terrific. (The Economist ran this debate with the same protagonists on 12 January.) Since this was futurology, based […]
Rachel Hendrick on the “Selling Sickness: People before Profit” conference
The conference “Selling Sickness: People before Profit” was held in Washington, D.C. on 20 – 22 February 2013. It was organised by Leonore Tiefer, a scholar and activist in sexuality, and Kim Witczak, an activist who became involved in pharmaceutical drug safety issues after the death of her husband, Tim “Woody” Witczak, in 2003, as […]
Elizabeth Loder: How medical journals can help stop disease mongering
It would be hard to collect a more fascinating bunch of topics or people in a hotel conference room. The 2013 Selling Sickness conference recently held in Washington, DC was among the most thought provoking and just plain interesting conferences I’ve been to in a long while, and I go to a lot of conferences. […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Beating on the glass ceiling
In July 2012, Anne Marie Slaughter, who is a professor at Princeton, resigned from her high profile position as the director of policy planning for the US State Department in Washington in order to spend more time with her teenage sons. Her resignation was accompanied by her well circulated article, “Why women still can’t have […]