A festival of fitness, athleticism, and aesthetic beauty – the world rowing championships. After a week watching some of the world’s top athletes, you begin to think everyone is tall, muscular, toned, and tanned. Only for mirrors you might believe you were one too. Very few fatties to be seen and only amongst the coaches or […]
Muir Gray: Competition between systems for pride 2.0
I was born in the Borough of Partick and a couple of weeks ago watched Partick Thistle, or “Partick Thistle Nil” as they are affectionately called, for the first time for fifty years. Little had changed, with the exception of the availability of a “skinny” mutton pie on the half time menu. The competition, versus […]
Richard Smith: Communicating with patients about ductal carcinoma in situ
Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a condition we don’t understand. We don’t know its significance, how to describe it, and how to treat it. Worse, we may have created it. Its incidence in the US in 1975 was 1.87 per 100 000; now it’s 32.5. During that time there has been no drop in […]
David Payne: India in Edinburgh
In the 1980s there was an eight year waiting list in India for a landline telephone. Long distance “trunk calls” had to be booked with an operator and required you to stay in all day and wait to be connnected. Now the subcontinent is the world’s largest cellphone market, with 851.7m mobile phone subscribers. The […]
Andrew Burd: Karma
Karma is a word that has distinct cultural meanings and can relate to spiritual or more secular events. Whatever the context, the general meaning concerns actions and consequences. After the devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China in 2008 it was an acknowledged faux pas for Sharon Stone to relate the death and destruction to “bad karma” over the […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 5 September 2011
NEJM 1 Sep 2011 Vol 365 787 Studies of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest require heroic feats of organization and generally provide survival-to-discharge rates around 7%. In this randomized trial, the research question was whether in a person found pulseless out of hospital, it’s best to start CPR immediately or to analyze the heart rhythm immediately. In […]
Sandra Lako: Busy times for Welbodi
My lack of recent blog posts is by no means due to a lack of something to report. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Life at Ola During Children’s Hospital (ODCH) has been busy and there are many exciting activities to keep us, and our partners, occupied. Let me update you on what has happened at […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Road traffic accidents in developing countries – farewell to the colonel
On 11 June 2011, 44 schoolboys died when the truck they were travelling in flipped into a canal in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The boys were from three villages and were riding in an open truck on their way back from a football competition. I was haunted by the image of the devastated village parents, who no doubt […]
Research highlights – 2 September 2011
“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. […]
Marge Berer: Independent abortion counselling? Whose problem?
Nadine Dorries MP is a very skilful politician. She decides there is a problem, for which she has absolutely no evidence. She not only manages to get her problem on to the front pages of the newspapers but also on to the agenda of the House of Commons. Having spoken to her about it, the […]