It seems unlikely that many of the BMJ’s readers are able to listen to Radio 4 between 8.30 and 9.00 am on a weekday, and even less likely that they could find time to read a 96 page paper by the Institute for Government, signposted on the Today programme a week or so ago, although its […]
Vasiliy Vlassov: Russian women’s reproductive rights in grave danger
According to current Russian law, women can ask for an elective abortion up until 12 weeks of pregnancy. Between 12 and 22 weeks, an abortion can only be made on the basis of medical or so called “social” indications laid out by the government. Over the years, the government has dramatically decreased the number of reasons that […]
David Kerr: The dark side of insulin
It has been a strange few weeks for insulin. This year is the 90th anniversary of its discovery and in everyday clinical practice, insulin still remains “a force of magical activity” as described in a letter to the Times shortly after it was first used in humans. Nowadays, despite a bewildering array of therapies for […]
Andrew Burd on Chinese medicine and Chinese trains
A few weeks ago I took the family on a trip to Wuhan. We went with another family and a family friend, so it was a jolly party that crossed the border and took a domestic flight from Shenzhen to Wuhan on the Friday evening. Wuhan is a fascinating city, positioned half way between Beijing […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 15 August 2011
Arch Intern Med 8/22 Aug 2011 Vol 171 The order in which I place these journals does not reflect merit, but dates back to 1998 when I first made some experimental one-line notes on the journals as they arrived in the post. O happy days! There was something good about handling the paper copy, and […]
Research highlights – 12 August 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. […]
Stephen Ginn: First impressions on being the BMJ’s editorial registrar
Last Wednesday I joined the BMJ as the Roger Robinson editorial registrar. This is my first despatch from the frontline of medical publishing. The registrar role has been running for 22 years and is named after the late Professor Robinson who was an associate editor at the BMJ for ten years. It’s for one year […]
Richard Smith: UN meeting on non-communicable diseases goes wobbly
Things are not going well with the UN high level meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that will take place in New York in a month’s time. The aim was to have completed negotiations on the outcomes document before the UN closed for its summer break, but this wasn’t achieved. The member states causing the most […]
Jo Maybin: Do actions speak louder than words on competition?
“What we are doing, through amendments to the legislation, is to make it absolutely clear that integration around the needs of the patient trumps other issues, including the application of competition rules.” […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Institute of Medicine’s workshop on country level decision making for NCDs
In a previous blog I mentioned that I attended the Institute of Medicine’s workshop on country level decision making for control of chronic diseases, which was held on 19-21 July at the House of Sweden in Washington, DC. However, I had promised more details of the meeting and then promptly disappeared for two weeks of vacation […]