Our paper, published last year in The BMJ, on the tendency among scientists in the biomedical field to cite Bob Dylan’s lyrics in their own papers,1 seems to have struck a chord. At the time of writing, the paper has been viewed or downloaded about 15,000 times and has an Altmetric Attention Score of more than […]
Laura Burkimsher: The art of medicine
“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” — Voltaire This was the opening sentence of my personal statement for my application to medical school. At the time it fitted the brief of being catchy and unique for my application and it appealed to my sense of the “treating […]
Joe Freer: Patient advocacy for antimicrobial resistance
“It was a good idea to get an economist to lead the review,” said Lord Jim O’Neill in Westminster yesterday*, referring respectively to himself and his 2016 report on Tackling Drug-Resistant Infections Globally. The numbers are important. At current trends, there will be 10 million deaths annually from antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by 2050, and $100 […]
Behrooz Astaneh: Iran’s scientific community shouldn’t be put in the shade
A recent news report published in Science ran with the alarming headline: “A shady market in scientific papers mars Iran’s rise in science.” The story reports that some Iranian scholars buy scientific papers to publish under their name, and that there is a prosperous market in Iran to sell such articles to researchers. While it […]
Neel Sharma: Lessons from the Bronx
I have just relocated to the Bronx in New York. At 29 I made it my mission to work and live abroad. I realised there comes a point when simply obtaining knowledge from books, online, or during conferences serves a limited purpose in medicine and in life in general. The only way to really learn […]
Richard Smith: STPs—too much sustainability, too little transformation?
STPs (Sustainability and Transformation Plans) are the device that it is hoped will save the NHS in England by dramatically improving efficiency and allowing NHS bodies to balance their budgets. They are being drawn up in the 44 “footprints” of England and are intended to cover acute hospitals, mental health, community services, and social care. […]
Peter Grabitz et al: How can we improve data sharing in public health emergencies?
At the recent World Health Summit in Berlin there was a workshop discussing the case of data sharing in Public Health Emergencies” organized by the Centre Virchow-Villermé. About two years ago, during the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, it became clear that researchers weren’t sharing screened viral genomes openly, thus delaying the outbreak response. At […]
Mary Higgins: Remembering
Recently we held our annual service of remembrance—the 20th time we have formally celebrated the brief lives of babies that died. This is an important part of our care of women, reflecting that for many their pregnancies do not always have a happy outcome. There are many words that could be used to describe this […]
Bev Stringer: Drug regulation in the age of antimicrobial resistance
The World Health Organization’s Global Tuberculosis (TB) Report 2016, released last week, is a sobering read. TB remains one of the world’s biggest killers, and cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are increasing. With this in mind, the theme of this week’s 47th Union World Conference on Lung Health “confronting resistance: fundamentals to innovation” is welcome […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—24 October 2016
NEJM 20 Oct 2016 Vol 375 Fainting and pulmonary emboli O Padua, sidus praeclarum, O Padua, brilliant star, hocce nisa fulgido luminous model virtutum regula morum of virtues and manners, serto refulgens florido, resting on this radiant wreath of flowers, te laudat juris sanctio, you receive praise from jurisprudence, philosophiae veritas from philosophical truth, […]