This week in New York, the zero draft of the outcome document of the post-2015 development agenda, “Transforming Our World,” will be negotiated at the United Nations (UN). The document provides the main framework for the post-2015 development agenda that will be adopted during the UN Summit in September. A post-2015 women’s coalition, coordinated by […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—22 June 2015
NEJM 18 June 2015 Vol 372 2387 For the first time in years, I actually handled a new printed copy of the NEJM last night. What a suave production it is! Flicking though its stylish pages with their subtle sheen, I came across the IMPROVE-IT study once again. It’s a telling reminder of how credulous […]
Richard Smith: Is informed consent impossible at the end of life?
Informed consent is impossible at the end of life, said a British palliative care physician last week at a conference on Heybeliada, one of the Prince’s Islands in the Sea of Marmara, close to Istanbul. Could he be right? Before I reflect on the question, I want to say a little about what was an […]
The BMJ Today: Insulin pumps, industry gender bias, and cervical lesions
• Insulin pumps Isabelle Steineck and colleagues have investigated the long term effects of insulin pump therapy on cardiovascular diseases and mortality in people with type 1 diabetes. They studied 2441 people using insulin pump therapy and 15 727 using multiple daily insulin injections. They found that insulin pump therapy was associated with lower cardiovascular mortality […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . The story of ough
Violet Elizabeth’s “croth-word puthle,” composed for William to solve in Richmal Crompton’s William—In Trouble (picture further below), contains two three lettered words crossing at the centre letters. The first clue is “Wot you hav dropps of” and the answer, of course, is “COF.” Violet Elizabeth can’t have been the only child to have been troubled […]
Desmond O’Neill: Surprised by beauty
Like most doctors, my conference schedule is usually mapped out well in advance, anticipating the complex leave requirements of trainees and colleagues in an ever busier department of geriatric and stroke medicine. This year, while on a 12 month secondment to the rapidly evolving Irish programme in traffic medicine, the constraints on my timetabling are correspondingly […]
The BMJ Today: IBS, body dysmorphia, and alteplase
• New treatments for irritable bowel syndrome In this state of the art review, Magnus Halland and Yuri Saito look at the scale of the problem of IBS worldwide and new and emerging drug and non-drug treatments for this common condition. This review includes a helpful interactive infographic, which guides the user through the appropriate […]
Anne Gulland: Mental health problems—a gender divide
Feckless, hysterical, neurotic, sluttish: these are just some of the adjectives used to describe female patients suffering from psychological illness in the book Good General Practice, an investigation into general practice published in the mid 1950s. [1] The author was Stephen Taylor, an eminent GP and civil servant whose views were typical of an age […]
Helen Macdonald: Discussing clot busters for stroke in the mainstream media
A recent episode of File on 4, entitled “Treating Stroke: The Doctor’s Dilemma,” discusses the latest on the only clot buster for ischaemic stroke—alteplase—and touches on broader debate that will be familiar to the medical community, but less so to a lay audience. Alteplase is currently being examined by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) after […]
The BMJ Today: Migrant access to the NHS, shape of training, and should we call time on knee arthroscopy?
Migrant access to the NHS In their feature, Lilana Keith and Ewout van Ginneken voice strong concern over the “dehumanisation” of migrants and the potential negative impact of changes to accessing the NHS that came into effect in April 2015. The authors suggest that the UK government’s plans to consult on expanding the policy to […]