The best thing about Richard Peto’s Harveian Oration last week, apart from its brilliance, wit, and perspicacity, was his definition of “middle age.” Whereas a lesser man might have made it end at 60, or 65, Peto made it stretch to 69, thus brightening the day for many members of the audience. He claimed the […]
Hugh Morris on City Health 2012
City Health 2012 is undoubtedly the most ambitious—and in many ways the most important event—the London Drug and Alcohol Policy Forum has hosted in the twenty years of its existence. We have hosted many events in that time on issues ranging from the needs of young people in terms of drug services, to helping improve […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—22 October 2012
JAMA 17 Oct 2012 Vol 308 1545 “Between 1988 and 2010, favorable trends in lipid levels have occurred among adults in the United States.” That may seem pretty amazing, but there is a lot we don’t understand about these things. Remember that cardiovascular disease is also falling steeply, even as the population gets more obese. […]
Desmond O’Neill: 50 shades of stroke
Language in Ireland can be tricky and subtle, with many shades of meaning possible for even simple words such as “stroke,” as our minister for health discovered to his chagrin in the last few weeks. A coalition government of moderately right wing and moderately left wing parties assumed office in 2011 in financially difficult circumstances, […]
Domhnall MacAuley: How to be a great researcher
What do you say when giving a talk at a university where you once worked? To speak about publishing, research, and the BMJ would be quite straightforward. It was a privilege to be invited and great to catch up with old friends but, did I have any additional messages for those setting out on a […]
Julian Sheather: Safeguarding adults—respecting freedom, maximising welfare
I was in Bromley recently at an adult safeguarding conference. It was in some respects a melancholy day. We heard about Brent Martin, a 23 year-old with learning disabilities and a mental disorder beaten to death by members of a gang who temporarily befriended him, though largely for access to his benefits. He had been […]
Alexander Ferris on helping young people make healthy eating choices
Earlier this year, Old Vic New Voices (OVNV) staged an ambitious new musical called Epidemic, devised and performed by over 400 community volunteers. The piece explored some of the UK’s most pressing public health concerns: mental illness, our ageing population, and obesity. Over one third of 11 to 15 year olds are overweight or obese. […]
Richard Smith: Stratified medicine vs the polypill
In the past month I’ve attended contrasting meetings on the polypill and stratified medicine that leave me wondering about the future of medicine. The problem that the polypill tries to solve is that only about 10% of people in the world get the simple drugs that could dramatically reduce their chances of having a heart […]
David Payne: How websites changed newspapers
The editor emailed me this to seek my views about how to make her weekly Editor’s Choice more relevant to the journal’s online readers. The article gets posted on bmj.com every Wednesday and appears in print two days later (all BMJ articles appear online ahead of print). Editor’s Choice helps busy print readers navigate that week’s issue, […]
Nathan Ford and Philipp du Cros: Gathering the evidence to improve healthcare in developing countries
A couple of sample dilemmas faced recently in the clinical programmes of the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). “This HIV positive woman in her first trimester of pregnancy is currently on an efavirenz-based regimen, what should we do?” “The patient I just saw in clinic has HIV infection and is hepatitis C antibody […]