A few weeks ago a child came to the hospital with classic signs of tetanus: a locked jaw, rigidity of the muscles, and jerking of the body. The diagnosis was obvious. The doctors and nurses tried to cure the child, but in reality they had little to offer. The children’s hospital is not set up […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Sports medicine awards and research opportunity
The Lord Speaker’s chambers at the House of Lords seemed an appropriate setting for the presentation of the Duke of Edinburgh prize for sport and exercise medicine. And, it seems, it would have taken place at Buckingham Palace had Prince Phillip not had a prior engagement. Among those honoured were the legendary Swedish orthopaedic surgeons […]
Anna Dixon: The NHS white paper – what do doctors think of their new roles?
The past few months have been busy for anyone like me whose job it is to make sense of the government’s policy on health care. The coalition government launched a series of detailed consultations to accompany the health white paper “Equity and Excellence: liberating the NHS” back in August, and the 12-week period for consultation […]
Richard Smith: The pain of prioritisation
With almost every endeavour participants have many more ideas on what might be done that than there are resources to get them done. Prioritisation is thus essential, but, my goodness, it’s hard. Many groups will slide back to making almost everything a priority, which means, of course, that nothing is a priority. I reflected on […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review, 25 October
JAMA 20 Oct 2010 Vol 304 What do fish oils and Mozart have in common? Answer: both have been proposed as ways to enhance neurocognitive development in utero. But I am afraid the claim is untrue in both cases, and had Mozart lived he would not have gone on to write The Magic Herring. Or […]
Helen Jaques: Evidence and policy making in public health
“Should evidence always dictate policy?” This was the key question at a recent debate at the Royal Society of Medicine organised as part of the Battle of Ideas, a festival that debates the “core issues of the day” and encourages free thinking and lively exchanges of views. […]
James Raftery: NICE changes its position on Alzheimer’s disease drugs
The provisional guidance from NICE on drugs for Alzheimers’ disease – donepezil, galantamine, rivastigmine, and memantine – marks a dramatic shift from restricting access to those with moderate disease to recommending these drugs as options for all patients with the disease. What has changed? No new compelling evidence has emerged. For each of the drugs […]
Research highlights – 22 October 2010
“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. […]
Annabel Ferriman: Of magnetricity, hand dryers, and levitating frogs
It is not often you get to swig champagne with a swarm of superior British scientists at the Science Museum but on Tuesday I did just that. I was substituting for our editor Fiona Godlee at a party thrown by the Times newspaper to celebrate the first anniversary of its science magazine, Eureka. […]
Ike Anya on awakening Nigeria’s sleeping giant
A major milestone passed in October this year, when Nigerians marked 50 years of independence. While our government celebrated, most Nigerians reflected on why the country had not fulfilled the great hopes engendered by the handover ceremonies in Lagos fifty years ago. […]