Asking about applicants’ mental health history risks driving physicians and trainees away from self care and deeper into distress […]
Nathaniel P Morris: US medical licensing applications ask too much about mental health
Peter Taylor: Health, SDGs, and public policy—the role of policy research institutions
The start of a journey In January 2016, shortly after 194 countries signed on to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and an ambitious, universal, and transformational vision for global development, The BMJ published an editorial titled “Accelerating achievement of the sustainable development goals.” The article drew on ideas that had emerged from a meeting—hosted in […]
Junaid Nabi: Voting rights are a public health issue
Last week the Republican party’s attempt to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) collapsed before promptly being revived again. The new bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), had previously received a damning evaluation from the bipartisan US Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which estimated that 15 million more people would be uninsured by 2018 under this legislation—a figure they reiterated […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—24 July 2017
Richard Lehman reviews the latest research in the top medical journals […]
Chris Simms: Brexit and the vengeance of unintended consequences
Decades before the advent of complexity science, H L Mencken wrote that “For every complex problem there is a solution which is clear, simple, and wrong.” These solutions typically complicate existing problems while creating new ones. Local and global health communities likely have lessons to offer political leaders at risk of opting for these kinds […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Interconnectedness
As I discussed last week, the physicist Alan Sokal has pointed out that “ . . . well tested theories in the mature sciences are supported in general by a powerful web of interlocking evidence coming from a variety of sources; . . . the progress of science tends to link these theories into a […]
George Gillett: The case of Charlie Gard should make us question our attitudes to parental autonomy
We should learn from the success of the Mental Capacity Act, and consider introducing capacity-based assessments for parental autonomy […]
Kathleen Ruff: Climate change—UN fails to address industry influence
Climate change is widely recognized as the most urgent issue facing planet Earth. The scientific community is clear: we must take strong action to stop practices that are causing global warming or risk passing a tipping point. [1] Yet instead of democratic leadership to protect the wellbeing of the planet ahead of all other interests, […]
Ilona Kickbusch: Health diplomacy at the G20—success or failure?
Global health advocates need to look critically at themselves, get out of their health bubble, and start to mobilize for global health […]
Jeave Reserva at al: Soft tissue fillers in aesthetic medicine
Soft-tissue fillers have become a cornerstone of modern nonsurgical aesthetic medicine, but they have come on a long way since the use of paraffin as a filler in nineteenth century aesthetic medicine. A dry distillation by-product of beech-wood tar paraffin was discovered in 1830 by German chemist Baron Karl Ludwig von Reichenbach, who noted its […]