It was not so long ago that there was a broadly held belief that modern society had defeated the worst of the world’s most lethal infectious diseases, and that the horrendous plagues of centuries gone by were no longer a possibility moving into the future. The emergence of HIV in the early 1980’s certainly challenged […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—6 October 2014
NEJM 2 October 2014 Vol 371 1285 Here is a trial which had me taking my glasses off and scratching my bald patch. Why on earth should a drug company—in this case Boehringer Ingelheim— want to pay for a trial of taking patients OFF a drug? And why in particular should it want to take people […]
The BMJ Today: Neoliberalism and The BMJ
Has The BMJ fallen for neoliberalism? A rapid response to the latest opinion piece by our regular columnist Nigel Hawkes suggests that “the discredited Neoliberal Economic theories that are found throughout the mainstream media in the UK have now made it into The BMJ, which up to now has been a haven from such reactionary and […]
Lucien Engelen: Flipping the coin from “for patients” to “by patients”
Although I still suspect my wife may have paid extra for a non-connected holiday home in the French Ardèche, it turned out pretty well to be honest. The first two days I tried every corner of the premises (a small summer castle on top of a mountain in Les Ollièrres sur Eyrieux) to see if there […]
Richard Smith: Improving health through the community in Tunisia
Tunisia, like all low and middle income countries, is having to respond to non-communicable disease after making good progress in reducing infectious disease and improving child and maternal health. Premature deaths from cardiovascular disease increased there by 35% between 1990 and 2010; they increased by 112% in Egypt and by 61% in Saudi Arabia—but fell by […]
Juliet Dobson: Probably Nothing
Probably Nothing is a comic by Matilda Tristram about discovering that she had colon cancer when she was 17 weeks pregnant. The comic, initially published online and now as a book, charts her diagnosis and subsequent treatment while pregnant and then looking after a newborn baby. It is a very honest and moving account of […]
The BMJ Today: More on climate change
Earlier this year, The BMJ’s editor in chief, Fiona Godlee, was one of 50 senior UK medical professionals to sign a letter in the Times newspaper about the health benefits of ending investment in fossil fuels, and diverting funds instead to alternative energy and more active forms of transport. On 1 October 2014, The BMJ […]
Suchita Shah: Malaria in the Little Novels of Sicily and why we need literature in medicine
“And you feel you could touch it with your hand—as if it smoked up from the fat earth, there, everywhere, round about the mountains that shut it in, from Agnone to Mount Etna capped with snow – stagnating in the plain like the sultry heat of June.” With these words Sicilian writer Giovanni Verga begins […]
William Cayley: Facing uncertainty
The first case of Ebola in the United States, a cluster of cases of “acute neurologic illness with focal limb weakness of unknown etiology in children,” and ongoing concern over enterovirus D68 in the US. As if economic uncertainty and ongoing conflicts around the globe were not enough to put one on edge, there is now […]
Abdullah Aljoudi: Are you fit for the journey of a lifetime?
“Pilgrimage to the House is a duty owed to God by people who are able to undertake it.” Quran 2:97. On Friday 3 October, over three million Muslims from more than 180 countries will come together for the Hajj, probably the largest human gathering on earth. […]