NHS sponsored homeopathy is being financially strangled amidst the baying cries of clinicians. In the ritualistic chanting of “placebo” and “evidence based medicine” they gleefully recapitulate the paucity of evidence underpinning this form of witchcraft. […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 13 September 2010
JAMA 8 Sep 2010 Vol 304 1073 “Adenocarcinoma of the pancreas is arguably the most challenging of human malignancies”, as the commentary on this study of adjuvant chemotherapy points out. And in fact the ESPAC-3 study doesn’t get us any further, except to rule out any benefit from adding gemcitabine to a regimen of fluouracil […]
Research highlights – 10 September 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. […]
Neil Snowise: Medical breakthroughs…what would you choose?
If you had to choose the major medical breakthroughs of the last century, how easy would this be and what would you select? This was the challenge for the Royal Mail who are about to issue six UK stamps to celebrate British medical breakthroughs. They’ve chosen varied topics which demonstrate the wealth and diversity of British […]
Richard Smith on banks and vulnerable people
Banks are probably now our most unpopular institutions, more so than estate agents, local authorities, and the Press Complaints Commission. So perhaps I shouldn’t kick them when they are down, but I fear that not only are they hopeless at managing risk (supposedly their core business) but also they are hopeless with vulnerable people. […]
Olivia Roberts: UK public prefers WHO to Dr Who
You would think that Matt Smith and David Tennant, of popular television programme Dr Who, would have a few more fans in the UK than Dr Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). But apparently not according to the results from the UK Public Opinion Monitor set up by the Institute of […]
Fabio Turone on colleagues fighting in Sicily
When you hear that a woman lost her uterus, and her newborn is in a coma because two obstetrician gynaecologists went into a fistfight in the delivery room of a university hospital in Sicily, your first thought is, “I can’t believe it.” Then the BMJ calls, and you must try to find a meaningful way to […]
Tony Waterston: ICAN, you can, we can: banning the bomb in Basel
Being a member of a Nobel peace prize-winning organisation confers pride but not necessarily a sense of direction. Both were overwhelmingly present at the 19th Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in Basel, which was attended by a record number of doctors and medical students from North and South America, Europe, […]
Kashif Shafique and colleagues on the public health challenges of the flood in Pakistan
As average global temperatures rise, the stability of the monsoon rainfall, over the past century, has been uncertain. It has long been expected in South Asian regions that heavy rain is going to cause an increasing amount of problems. The recent devastating and unprecedented rainfall during July 2010 and early August 2010, hit all the […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 6 September 2010
JAMA 1 Sep 2010 Vol 304 967 A couple of weeks ago, the BMJ published a rather strange piece about the terrible psychological effects of chemical castration in men with prostate cancer. But although I’ll no doubt be sorry to part with that aspect of myself if I ever have to, this pales into insignificance […]