For the first time a large European awareness campaign to help smokers quit focuses on the positive aspects of doing so, rather than highlighting cancer, heart disease, or death. We are so used to dreadful messages, such as the striking images already seen on cigarette packages in many countries worldwide, that this new proposal from […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Doctors in this week’s sports headlines
Caught in a spat between a multi million pound footballer and a multi billion pound football club. Bet they didn’t warn him about that in medical school. Owen Hargreaves said he felt like a “guinea pig” while his injury was treated at Manchester United – and the club doctor, Steve McNally, was named in the media. We don’t […]
Rachel ter Horst: Inspiring progress in the fight against sleeping sickness
Bamako, Mali. Leopard print chairs, a rather dark conference room filled mainly with African men dressed in either dark suits or colourful long boubous, with some women and westerners here and there. The 31st biennial International Scientific Council for Trypanosomiasis Research and Control (ISCTRC) was about to start. On the menu: progress towards elimination of […]
David Payne: Happy 13th birthday, (scary) Google
In Washington DC last week Google CEO Eric Schmidt defended the company’s business practices when he appeared before a Senate antitrust panel. Down the road at Georgetown University the following day, his colleague Darcy Dapra was doing a similar thing to an audience of scholarly publishers. Mr Schmidt’s appearance was to reject claims that Google, […]
Andrew Burd on Chinese medicine, burns, and HIV
A story has just emerged in the local press about a 30 year old woman from Guangdong province (just across the border from Hong Kong) who sustained 85% deep burns in an agricultural accident. The reason this unfortunate burns patient became the focus of publicity is that she is HIV positive and that has led […]
Bob Roehr: The changing complexity of HIV vaccine trials
Successes in treating and preventing HIV infections are making it more difficult, more expensive, and perhaps more uncertain to plan and conduct HIV vaccine trials in the countries most affected by the epidemic. That is because those trials are driven by the endpoint of new infections, which are being reduced. […]
Martin McShane: Integration
I was recently asked to give a brief talk on the role of a commissioner in integrated care. Chris Ham, Judith Smith, and Elizabeth Eastmure’s paper on this issue highlights the factors on which commissioners need to focus on to make a success of commissioning integrated care and some of the barriers currently in place. […]
Peter Johnson: Reforming the European Clinical Trials Directive
The European Clinical Trials Directive (EUCTD) has been a contentious issue across the UK’s medical research community since its introduction in 2004. Promising to bring a unified system of approvals and standards of clinical practice to the UK and across Europe, the directive has at best fallen short on delivering these promises and at worst […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 26 September 2011
JAMA 21 Sep 2011 Vol 306 1205 I don’t know why spammers have me down as so interested in imitation Rolex watches and erectile function: neither is particularly true. But I guess that if I had a diagnosis of localised prostate cancer, I might want to know the chances of each treatment option causing me […]
Bob Roehr: Rise of the antibodies
The focus of HIV vaccine research has shifted over time as one aspect or another has offered more of a glimmer of hope for success. Lack of progress in creating a vaccine that prevents infection led to a focus on T cells in the hope that if one could not prevent infection, then perhaps one […]