Lately, social media sites have been invaded by videos of people upending buckets of icy water over their heads. The goal behind this watery exercise is to raise funds, as well as awareness, for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) research. The ALS ice bucket challenge is simple: douse yourself in icy water, record it, post it online—on […]
Paul Teed: Is medical opinion shifting towards support for an assisted dying law?
Over the weekend, the Times published findings from a new survey conducted by Medix, which asked 600 doctors various questions on assisted dying, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. The coverage contrasted the findings with those from a similar Medix survey a decade ago, reported then in The BMJ. But reading the complete data in the new survey […]
The BMJ Today: If wishes were sustainable development goals
Fourteen years ago, leaders from across the world came together at the United Nations headquarters in New York to pledge their efforts towards achieving eight targets for global development. Together, these targets became known as the millennium development goals or MDGs (with three of them directly devoted to a health objective). Since then, The BMJ, […]
Jasmin Islam: Ebola readiness—lessons from a district general hospital
Since the Ebola outbreak was confirmed back in March 2014, I, like many doctors, have been following its progress with a great deal of interest and sadness over the increasing number of deaths, which have included several healthcare workers. In relation to the current outbreak, there have been no confirmed cases of Ebola in the […]
The BMJ Today: Ebola, Edinburgh, edifices
Ebola and the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence have, among other things, spared UK national newspaper editors the anxiety of how to fill column inches in the “silly season” month of August. The BMJ can at least drop a print and iPad issue, as it is doing this week, but we and other general medical […]
David Zigmond: Can we always “treat” our tragic paradoxes?
Robin Williams’s recent death is a familiar shock: another premature loss of a publicly loved figure. How do we understand and respond to such tragic discrepancy? On the radio (BBC’s Today programme on Radio 4, 15/8/2014) there were lengthy interviews with two publicly accountable experts: the director of long term conditions for NHS England and the president of […]
The BMJ Today: Medicine’s vast horizons
At first glance, three articles published this week in The BMJ appear to have limited relevance to medicine. One, written by an economist, discusses the challenges faced by demographers when making predictions about population changes; a second deals with international drug control treaties and the need for policy experiments to evaluate the benefits and risks […]
Neal Maskrey: Tipping the balance towards individualised care
I don’t really get the horror genre. Even as a young boy, the flaky plots and a world working to different rules than the one I was becoming more familiar with every day all seemed laughably improbable. Science takes us incrementally and logically from one discovery to another, building on the shoulders of giants. In […]
The BMJ Today: Working as a GP is often a tall order
Any GP around the world who’s been in the game long enough is aware that one of the big challenges of the job is to manage patients’ daunting and often unrealistic expectations. In time slots that range from five to 20 minutes—depending on the geographical jurisdiction one is practicing in—GPs do their best to adhere […]
James Raftery: Sofosbuvir for hepatitis C—moving to country specific prices
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has provisionally approved sofosbuvir (brand name Sovaldi) for the treatment of hepatitis C, a decision that has surprised some commentators given its high price. The drug’s price in the United States of $84k for a 12 week course would be £54.6k at the current exchange rate of $/£0.65. But Gilead […]