On 30 January 2015 the Lancet published a re-analysis of oseltamivir effects in symptomatic influenza like illness “Oseltamivir treatment for influenza in adults: a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.” This was authored by Joanna Dobson, Richard J Whitley, Stuart Pocock, and Arnold S Monto. The Lancet supplemented this re-analysis with an article by Heath Kelly and Benjamin […]
The challenges China faces as it stops using organs from executed prisoners
From 1 January 2015, China stopped using organs from executed prisoners for transplants. This was announced by Jiefu Huang, China’s former vice minister of health and current head of the Organ Donation Committee. This comes after a series of legislative frameworks for organ donation and transplantation since 2007, as well as several pilot programmes that were conducted between […]
Samir Dawlatly: Healthcare in 2065
I looked down at my left leg. It had been aching for a day or two. Thanks to the laser eye surgery that I had had the previous month, I could see that the left calf was definitely more swollen than the right. I sat back in my chair and reminisced. Back when I was […]
Kate Adlington: Mitochondrial donation—the person at the centre of “three person IVF”
A vote was held yesterday in the House of Commons to decide whether to allow mitochondrial donation to be used in clinical practice. The vote marked the culmination of a decade of research and consultation into the science and ethics of so called “three person IVF”—a modified IVF technique proposed to prevent transmission of mitochondrial […]
Pritpal S Tamber: Interview with Jonathan Stead on transforming disadvantaged communities
It’s pretty well understood that people from disadvantaged communities have more important things to worry about than their health. However, one general practitioner (primary care physician) in the southwest of England believes that if you start from what people actually want, you can eventually impact their health and wellbeing. That general practitioner is Dr Jonathan […]
The BMJ Today: Torture, training, and role models
Unsettlingly recent media coverage seems to be full of articles and images of torture which raises the questions for our profession of “What is the role of doctors when faced with victims of torture?” and “Where should their loyalties lie?” Torture as described in a recent editorial is “a complex, politically driven phenomenon that is […]
Shanti Vijayaraghavan: Using mobile technology to empower patients
Where I work in Newham, east London, there are some acute challenges to delivering efficient and effective healthcare. We have a young local population with a high prevalence of diabetes and multiple long term conditions. It is not a wealthy area, and people often find it very difficult to take time off work for hospital […]
Neville Goodman: Stemming the rising tide of epidemic proportions
Metaphor is useful. When Malcolm Gladwell wrote about an epidemic of Hush Puppies, no one thought that Hush Puppies were transmissible in anything more than the metaphorical sense. But as doctors we need to be more careful before we muddy the meanings of our technical words. An epidemic is a widespread occurrence of an infectious […]
The BMJ Today: When is a doctor a GMC doctor and when is a doctor a Robodoc?
Plans to move doctors’ full registration with the General Medical Council from the end of the first year of foundation training to the point of graduation from medical school was first mooted over a year ago in a major review of postgraduate medical education and training. The plan was voted down at the BMA’s annual […]
James Buchanan: Genomics, the data revolution, and health economics—the 2015 Astellas Innovation Debate
It’s early days, but 2015 is already shaping up to be another exciting year for researchers in genomics. In his State of the Union address last month, Barack Obama launched a new $215m Precision Medicine Initiative, which aims to collect genomic sequencing data for one million individuals. In the UK, we’re slightly further down this […]