Millions of people face financial ruin to afford surgery. Five billion to be precise, that’s how many people in the world currently have to weigh up the dilemma of financial ruin to afford surgery. After regularly volunteering for a couple of weeks every year, in 2012 I decided to give up my full time job […]
Michel Kazatchkine: Time to prioritise HIV/AIDS and MDR-TB in Eastern Ukraine as supplies run out
The road to Donetsk from Kramatorsk, the last city in mainland Ukraine before the internal border, is beautifully lined with frosted trees. But its beauty belies the harsh reality of actually reaching Donetsk. It is not a simple journey, as I discovered on a recent trip in January. Only one road crosses the so called […]
The sugar tax: “Was it The BMJ wot won it?”
“Get something out on social?” urged a colleague in response to UK Chancellor George Osborne’s sugar tax announcement in his Budget speech last week. “I think you can claim that as a ‘win’ for The BMJ” added another after we reminded him of the many articles we have published on the sugar tax. We quickly […]
Elizabeth Atherton and Josephine Head: How environmentally sustainable are the UK’s new dietary guidelines?
Last week saw the launch of the Eatwell Guide—the UK’s official food guide to healthy diets. Astonishingly, despite major changes in eating habits and advances in nutrition science, this is the first review of these guidelines since their original publication 20 years ago. While the update—prompted by expert recommendations on sugar—is long overdue and welcomed, it […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—21 March 2016
NEJM 17 Mar 2016 Vol 374 Unnecessary pessary 1044 “This randomized trial showed that placement of a pessary in girls and women who were pregnant with singletons and who had a short cervix at 20 to 24 weeks of gestation did not result in a lower rate of preterm delivery before 34 weeks of gestation […]
Jeff Aronson: When I Use a Word … Naming biologics—rINNs and pINNs
This week I went to Harrogate to take part in the Royal College of Physicians’ (RCP’s) annual conference “Medicine 2016”, to contribute to a session on biological medicines (biologics). It included talks on micro-RNAs by John Warren, interleukins and dermatology by Richard Warren, CD receptors and haematology by Anthony Goldstone, epidermal growth factor receptors and […]
Junior doctor strike: Angels need to eat and pay their bills
The junior doctor strike in England triggered an Oxford Union debate last month about the extent to which patient safety is compromised when public sector workers take industrial action. But will health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s revamp of pay and conditions stop at doctors? Are nurses in his sights? And if so, how likely are they […]
Andy Cowper: How to march your troops back down again
As another bout of industrial action concludes in the junior doctors’ dispute, the BMA junior doctors’ committee leadership has won outright. Their leaders were carried in triumph down Whitehall, celebrating Jeremy Hunt’s resignation as Health Secretary over the issue. “Jerexit” deepened the Government’s split over Europe, and a subsequent wave of defections to UKIP destroyed […]
Pratheeshaa Varuni Nageswaran: The fictional narrative
I entered medical school armed with a large collection of my favourite fiction, a boxset of Friends, and excitement for this new phase of my life. Although getting lost in a book had always previously been one of my favourite things to do in my spare time, I found that with the increasing number of […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Time to come off the gold standard
This blog started with epidemic proportions. There are nearly 1800 PubMed articles written in English that have epidemic proportions in the title or abstract. Of the other metaphors I’ve dealt with, some are more common and some are less: there are 5000 drawbacks, 900 Holy Grails, 100 red herrings. But these pale before the gold […]