If you rely on a prosthetic limb for your everyday mobility then you will need to visit a limb fitting centre throughout your whole life. In 1968, I lost my lower left leg when I was run over by a number 11 bus in Trafalgar Square, and I can remember every detail, every prosthetist, and […]
Leigh Daynes: Healthcare access in the West—fact, not fiction
What do America, France, the UK, and most of the richest countries in the world all have that they should not have? The answer I’m looking for is not nuclear weapons, national debts, or billionaire bankers. It’s a large (and growing) number of people who are unable to access essential healthcare—many of them extremely vulnerable. At […]
The BMJ Today: The BMJ goes to a major European conference
GPs are a key audience of The BMJ, and we work hard to develop content that is highly relevant for the needs of GPs around the world. This week, The BMJ’s staff is in full swing in Lisbon, Portugal, and the occasion is the regional conference of WONCA (The World Organization of Family doctors), which […]
The BMJ Today: Statins and uncertainty
And so the debate about the adverse effects of statins rumbles on. Nigel Hawkes reported from yesterday’s press briefing at the Science Media Centre saying that the ‘Statins War’ shows ‘no signs of a ceasefire’. Six leading professors of cardiology and epidemiology present at the meeting backed the NICE guidance on extending the use of statins, expressing conviction that benefits […]
David Kerr: Silicon is the new black
Recently the big four titans of technology (Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and Google) have, almost simultaneously, thrown their hats into the wearable sensor ring. Apparently, consumers now want to wear devices to record personal physiological data, which can then be synchronized with their smartphones. Through cloud computing, this can then be shared with their doctors and […]
The BMJ Today: New name, new logo, new website, some bugs
Writers of this daily update about new stuff published by The BMJ usually face an embarrassment of riches—more than 100 articles go online each week, along with dozens of rapid responses, video abstracts, and audio interviews. But yesterday hardly anything got published because we needed to clear the decks for a new website, which heralds […]
Neal Maskrey: The importance of kindness
We seem to have a little hit on our hands. The BMJ published our Analysis article “Evidence based medicine: a movement in crisis?” and within a few days, the social media channels were humming. Returning to the original concept of EBM, which was all about the holistic care of individual patients, seems to have struck a […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—30 June 2014
NEJM 26 Jun 2014 Vol 370 2478 Cryptogenic is a good word. It’s up there with “idiopathic” and “pleiotropic” and “diathesis” for covering gross ignorance with a smattering of Greek. “Cryptogenic” sounds as if it was first used to describe the odd symptoms that Superman experienced when exposed to kryptonite. However, its first use was recorded […]
The BMJ Today: Sugar—public enemy number one?
The crackdown on sugar continues. The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition in the UK has recommended that people reduce their daily consumption of added sugar so that it makes up around 5% of the average dietary energy intake, reports Matthew Limb. As Ian Macdonald, professor of metabolic physiology at Nottingham University and the advisory group’s […]
Desmond O’Neill: Blinded by science
The newest architectural gem in Trinity College Dublin is the award winning Long Room Hub, a slim and elegant presence inserted among classical, neoclassical, and modern buildings. Just as its many windows offer unexpected vistas on to this beautiful campus, the activities of the Hub have injected fresh energy into interdisciplinary research and public engagement […]