JAMA 16 Nov 2011 Vol 306 2099 Steve Nissen became something of a hero of mine when he showed how bad data from pharma-funded studies had been used to mask the fact that rosiglitazone (Avandia) was harming diabetic patients while lowering a surrogate end-point – blood glucose or glycated haemoglobin. But here he is leading […]
Our new site is now ten days old and we’re continuing to get feedback from readers. My first blog listed some of the comments we’d had to date, and our response to them. I’ll keep blogging to update readers on the latest feedback. We did our first post-launch release on Tuesday to mop up some […]
Pneumococcal disease causes probably at least half of the pneumonia cases in Malawi. It also causes meningitis, blood poisoning, and otitis, which if it doesn’t kill can leave a child disabled, deaf, and disadvantaged for the rest of their life. Vaccination is one of the most straightforward health interventions we have. The pneumococcal vaccine introduced […]
World pneumonia day this year was occasion for a huge celebration in Malawi, as we had chosen the day to introduce pneumococcal vaccines, which will protect our children from the leading cause of pneumonia. In Malawi, pneumonia contributes to 14% of all hospital admissions and 18% of hospital deaths in children under five. The introduction […]
“Dear sir, I have completely failed to understand a simple criticism of our work, please tell everyone, yours, BBCnews“ Tweet by @bengoldacre, 4 November 2011 The misuse of epidemiology is everywhere. Lets look at two prominent culprits. ”Three fold variation’ in UK bowel cancer death rates’ splashed a recent BBC News headline. […]
In the past decade, recommendations and user’s guides for evaluating, reporting, and interpreting health related quality of life (HRQL) outcomes from randomised controlled trials have been published, but disappointingly few of the standards are translated into practice. In a recent review of 794 trials that reported HRQL outcomes across a range of clinical areas, only […]
“Research highlights” is a weekly round-up of research papers appearing in the print BMJ. We start off with this week’s research questions, before providing more detail on some individual research papers and accompanying articles. […]
I am in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to mark world pneumonia day and also to learn more about how the UK’s financial contributions to Bangladesh and the GAVI Alliance are helping to change lives on the ground. Since 2010, I have chaired the all party parliamentary group for global action against childhood pneumonia and have particularly focused […]
I’d like to tell you about my mother, Doris.* She is 87 years old and has been on haemodialysis for nearly 25 years (is this a record?). She has dialysis three times a week for four hours, has a heavily restricted diet and fluid intake, and cannot go on holiday. But she doesn’t complain about any […]
I know I’m becoming a bore with all this raving against prepublication peer review, but like all true bores I’m charging on regardless. And I’m fired up by the experience I’ve had in the past few minutes. Unsurprisingly, I’m a hypocrite as well as a bore, and despite my protestations I do a fair bit […]