“BMJ covers get everywhere” is a blog featuring humorous photos of BMJ covers sent in by our readers. Please submit your photos to JDobson@bmj.com, or send a twitpic to @bmj_latest. Excessive crying in infants […]
BMJ covers get everywhere: Cat
“BMJ covers get everywhere” is a blog featuring humorous photos of BMJ covers sent in by our readers. Please submit your photos to JDobson@bmj.com, or send a twitpic to @bmj_latest. Cat […]
Juliet Dobson: Freedom of the press v privacy rights. Is it time for parliament to draw the line?
The seventh UCL/Bindmans Debate on 8 February tackled the question of press privacy. Should parliament regulate the press? One side of the argument is that freedom of expression is too important to be regulated. But on the other hand, is the press now too immoral to regulate itself? Tessa Jowell, Labour MP and shadow minister […]
Chris Naylor: Effective chronic care means recognising the importance of mental health
The interaction between physical and mental health has been attracting increasing attention across the political spectrum. Last year, the government recognised the importance of the issue with its mental health strategy “No health without mental health.” And more recently, Andy Burnham chose integration of mental and physical health care as the subject of his first […]
Desmond O’Neill: Old ideas
The year has barely started, but it is a fairly safe bet that one of the stand-out albums of 2012 will be Leonard Cohen’s Old Ideas. For the many (including me!) allergic to the bedsit misery of his early work, there is reassurance about what old age can bring us in the drollery, bite, and […]
Muir Gray: Bye bye A&E, hello SFS
Reality is created by the language we use. Language creates reality rather than describing it; that is the consistent message from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Benjamin Lee Whorf, and John R Searle. If we want to change reality one way is to change the language used, and for this reason we ban, or try to ban, the […]
Richard Smith: A proposal that could be implemented today and save 5000 lives
I’ve had a brainwave. It’s a proposal that could be implemented today and save the UK 5000 lives a year (at a rough guess.) The proposal is to stop all escalators immediately. I must confess that my brainwave, brilliant and simple as it is, has ignoble origins. Living in London and travelling regularly on the […]
Annabel Ferriman: Will Cameron face warfare in the new Jerusalem?
Poor Mr Cameron. Up till now, he must have thought that if only the Health and Social Care Bill survives the House of Lords and its return to the Commons, everything will be all right. Then, when it gets the Royal Assent, the sceptics will see the light, hail Andrew Lansley as the new Bevan, […]
Richard Smith: An open letter to creative friends
Dear creative friends, Might you be interested to try and depict in some way—in a novel, play, series of poems, popular book, or whatever—a sustainable and believable world and how we might get there? I ask because us scientists (I hesitate to call myself a scientist but will for now) are extremely worried about the […]
Nell Crowden: What’s bad for the climate is bad for health
“Perverting the course of evidence-based policy on climate change adaptation and mitigation damages our health resilience, our economic prosperity, and our environmental stability.” (Transparency needed on donors to climate sceptic lobby, Guardian, 26.1.12) Recently there was a freedom of information (FOI) hearing at the Information Rights Tribunal into whether to publicly reveal the funders behind Lord […]