A few months before the 2004 UEFA European Football Championship, we moved to the sports mad north west of England, where you could taste the anticipation. St George’s flags hung from houses, work rotas were switched to catch the live matches on TV, and we put on a street barbeque for England’s first match. Bunting […]
Rhys Davies: Women’s Rights are Human Rights
“How many women does it take to change a light bulb? One, but she may need to get a ladder or stand on a chair first.” As a straight white male, I am, as writer John Scalzi puts it, playing life on easy mode. I don’t have to look for long to see how much […]
The BMJ Today: How to defeat the world’s deadliest animal
“What is the most dangerous animal in the world?” Not an obvious opening line to an Observations article by The BMJ’s regular columnist Douglas Kamerow. However, if you follow his line of questioning (A shark? The black mamba? Jellyfish?) to the eventual answer, then all becomes clear, for all these fearsome creatures “pale when compared […]
Richard Smith: The polypill reaches the plateau of productivity
“I’m outraged,” said Robert Beaglehole, former director at WHO responsible for non communicable disease, at the end of the second polypill summit in Melbourne recently. He’s outraged because the world is failing to respond adequately to the “global public health crisis” of non communicable disease (NCD) that is destroying lives in low and middle income […]
Kamran Abbasi: Twenty five years of The BMJ’s editorial registrar scheme
The BMJ tends to hesitate over anniversaries, especially its own, but today marks 25 years of the best training scheme in the history of medical journalism. I would say that, I’m a former editorial registrar. So is editor in chief, Fiona Godlee. As is deputy editor and head of research, Trish Groves. Helen Macdonald and […]
Sabine Best: Clinicians, patients, and carers—having your say in palliative and end of life care research
Palliative and end of life care is under researched; there are many unanswered questions to be addressed, and yet resources for research are limited. For research to have a lasting impact, it is crucial that funders understand what is most important to patients, their families, and the professionals who work with them to improve care […]
The BMJ Today: Barriers to shared decision making
A research study published online in the journal Cancer has suggested that the rate of invasive cervical cancer in the United States is much higher than had been previously thought. The study, conducted by Anne F Rositch, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and Patti Gravitt, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg […]
The BMJ Today: Childhood poverty and early health
Spring seems to have finally reached London, and what we’re lacking in lambs The BMJ seems to be making up with newborns, the BMJ baby count so far stands at three with two more to come soon. A good early start in life is important, and the benefits of breast feeding are well known—but this […]
David Maher and David Pencheon: Adding wider social value when commissioning
Increasingly, we are being asked to do more with less. The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, a private member’s bill, became law in January 2012. It requires all commissioners of public services to consider economic, social, and environmental value—not just price—when buying goods and services. Social value is about how well scarce resources are allocated […]
Tiago Villanueva: Have you started planning your death?
I have to admit I always try to steer away from any uncomfortable thoughts about death concerning myself or my loved ones, and I have realized that I have never given a thought, let alone done any of the five things recommended by the coalition Dying Matters to both live and die well. They recommend […]