Exactly a hundred years ago, on 19 February 1916, a British soldier, Captain Robert French, died in London after injuries sustained in battle. The following account is taken from his medical notes (picture). Captain French was wounded on 25 September 1915 while fighting with the 1st Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers during the Battle of Loos. […]
Peter Buijs and Lode Wigersma on a Dutch medical appeal for nuclear disarmament
In September 2015, on the UN International Day for Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, a medical appeal for nuclear disarmament was presented in Amsterdam (see below). This declaration, signed with remarkable enthusiasm by 100 leading Dutch healthcare executives, clinicians, and scientists, is meant to put the urgent need for nuclear disarmament back on the societal […]
Steve Ruffenach: Tech never forgets—does this make patients less keen to share?
The poet Thomas Moore wrote, “The heart that has truly loved never forgets.” Rocker Bob Seeger crooned, “Rock and Roll never forgets.” And indeed it was well over five years ago that the New York Times reported that the internet never forgets. Rest assured, the digital world remembers everything. My new MA, Tech, is no […]
Richard Smith: Systems thinking is essential for responding to obesity (and much else)
The recent discovery of gravitational waves allows a whole new way of seeing the Universe. With some similarities the recognition that the world is much more complicated and unpredictable than researchers thought opens up the possibility of an effective response to the global pandemic of obesity. That’s what Boyd Swinburn, professor of population nutrition and […]
Jamie Hartmann-Boyce: Nicotine replacement therapy—the evolution of an evidence base
What is “an evidence base?” And when does it become solid? Though it’s reassuring to think of an evidence base as fixed, in reality it’s a shape shifter—changing as new studies come out and adapting to fit the needs of an evolving population and an ever changing set of users. Take, for example, nicotine replacement […]
Huw Green: Schizophrenia—what doesn’t exist?
Jim van Os provides an excellent summary of why many clinicians and researchers (especially the latter) have become frustrated with the imprecision of the term schizophrenia. Among scientists, calls to abandon the diagnosis have sounded for more than 25 years and will probably eventually be heeded. Few scientists would bet that it will retain its currency […]
Oommen C Kurian: Should India lift its ban on prenatal sex testing?
Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP), the flagship scheme of India’s ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD), is trying to address a declining child sex ratio—919 females per thousand males in 2011—by focusing on the worst-performing states across the country. Earlier this week, the ministry announced a substantial expansion of the scheme, now covering quarter of the country. […]
Richard Smith: How might the NHS die?
“The NHS is under tremendous pressure,” I tell a novelist friend. “Could it die?” he asks. “I suppose it could.” “How would that happen?” How would it happen? That’s a hard question. I didn’t have a convincing answer, but it’s a question worth examining. I trotted out to my novelist friend my usual reference by […]
Paul Glasziou: Still no evidence for homeopathy
When the National Health and Medical Research Council report on homeopathy concluded that “There was no reliable evidence from research in humans that homeopathy was effective for treating the range of health conditions considered” few in conventional medicine were surprised, but the homeopathy community were outraged. As chair of the working party which produced the […]
Billy Boland: Lessons from a Quality Improvement geek
I’ve become somewhat of a Quality Improvement #QI geek in the last year or so. Since first getting my head around the concept, I’m now an enthusiast and have witnessed first hand how useful it is as an approach to improve services and the quality of what we do. I still firmly believe it takes […]