Expenditure in older populations is an investment, not a cost, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) With relatively little fanfare, the World Report on Ageing and Health—one of the most important WHO documents in recent years—was launched in New York to coincide with the UN International Day of Older Persons on 1 October. It represents a […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—12 October 2015

NEJM 8 October 2015 Vol 373 1397 Famous as a pioneer of hypertension studies, Sir George Pickering (1904-1980) was a man of forceful opinions, and used to command the attention of his hearers by gripping their arms tightly for the duration of the encounter. As I was a medical student and he was Master of […]
The BMJ Today: The NHS, dietary guidelines, and diabetes drugs
• The NHS keeps dominating headlines, with bad news and some good news. The bad news is the deficit of almost a billion pounds, which NHS hospital trusts in England have run up in the first three months of this year. This is already higher than the deficit for the whole of the previous financial year. Gareth […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Black fire, spiders, and dogs
Most of the dozen words with medical connections that I found in the Old English dictionary called the Epinal glossary are obsolete, with modern equivalents. For example, átr or atter. “Atter”, meaning poison, gall, or, figuratively, bitterness, is not documented later than the 16th century, although it lived on, at least until the late 19th […]
Barry Main et al: Time to make research findings CRYSTAL clear?
By BG Main, NS Blencowe, and JM Blazeby. Hardly a day goes by without a prominent health story appearing in the press or other media. Headline-grabbing statements about “miracle” breakthroughs or “scare” stories are beloved of journalists, readers, and politicians alike. But hidden behind the headline is often a fundamental misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the […]
Neville Goodman’s metaphor watch: Low hanging cherries
To cherry pick is to choose selectively. It’s supposed to originate from the way cherry pickers select the ripest, unblemished cherries to pick; why cherries rather than apples, oranges, or any other fruit is unclear. It is a modern expression. The Oxford English Dictionary first records it in 1966, from The Times, although it first […]
China’s semantic trick with prisoner organs
By Kirk C Allison, Norbert W Paul, Michael E Shapiro, Charl Els, and Huige Li. On 3 December 2014, the director of the China Organ Donation Committee and former vice-minister of health, Huang Jiefu, announced that China would cease using death-row prisoners’ organs for transplantation after January 2015. Since then, many medical professionals and international […]
Jocalyn Clark: Predatory journals debate raises controversies—but they’re not going away
I think it’s fair to say that the topic of so-called predatory journals was the hot one at the recent World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) conference. The meeting coincided with the publication of new evidence of the enormous growth of the market of predatory open access journals. Shen and Bjork reported in BMC Medicine […]
The BMJ Today: Hunt says BMA is being “irresponsible”
• Yes, you read that headline correctly—Jeremy Hunt is accusing doctors of being irresponsible over their handling of the new contract for junior doctors. As Gareth Iacobucci reports, the health secretary told the Conservative Party conference that the BMA was being “utterly irresponsible” in the way it has handled changes to junior doctors’ contracts. He said […]
John Hughes: The UK will slip from world leaders in palliative care if complacency replaces progress
The Quality of Death Index report from The Economist Intelligence Unit once again ranks the UK as providing the best “quality of death” and “quality of palliative care” as compared with 80 countries around the world. The report uses a number of indices to reach its conclusions in what is an extremely well researched document. […]