Difficult cases may make bad law, but they can also be a powerful stimulus for thought. A problem may be a candle, as the French writer Paul Valéry put it, but an insurmountable problem is a sun. The Hastings Center, a leading US bioethics think tank, recently posted a legal case that asks ferociously difficult […]
The General Medical Council’s guidance to doctors on end of life care, which came into force on 1 July, is obviously a welcome and much-needed initiative. It is interesting to see that Dominic Bell in his BMJ editorial emphasised that the GMC acted in response to concerns from doctors themselves, particularly about issues around patients […]
Don’t talk about climate change. Don’t even use the words. It is liable to make people stick their heads in the sand. David Pencheon, Director of the NHS Sustainable Development Unit (England), in his address at the Society for Academic Primary Care, thinks we should talk about sustainable living and emphasise the importance of sustainability, […]
I attended my first Faculty of Public Health Annual Conference at Imperial College London last week. I’m told it used to be a 2-day event with several breakout sessions, but this was a smashing one day event with a keynote address from the new Secretary of State for Health( more of whom later), two plenary sessions […]
JAMA 7 July 2010 Vol 304 45 Glucosamine is the doctor’s best friend. It doesn’t do anything, but people believe it might, and so if you have trouble treating their joint symptoms you can always say “have you tried glucosamine?”. Note that you are not obliged to lie: the most you have to say is […]
These days I spend lots of time in low and middle income countries, and as I think more about their health problems and less about the endless reorganisations of the NHS, I begin to see the world very differently. Recently I was asked to give the Redfern Oration to the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, […]
When a surgeon praises the achievements of primary care, you sit up and listen. Admittedly, Professor Sam Leinster was welcoming delegates to the Society of Primary Care meeting at the University of East Anglia where he is Dean. And he did say he was fed the script by Amanda Howe, Professor of Primary Care. But, […]
Poverty is synonymous with Malawi, a small African country, but nevertheless Malawi seems to be leading the field in terms of quality research. At least it is according to the Global Research Report: Africa by Thomson Reuters published in April 2010. The report assessed publication output in the Web of Science database between 1999 and 2008. […]
The departmental server went down in the period of time between leaving work on Friday evening and arriving home. In Hong Kong we are ahead of most of the world and so when our work hours are over, the west is just getting started. This is why the evening email check has become part of […]
Change is afoot in Bangladesh in terms of smoking and may represent a missed opportunity to prevent women from smoking. According to the WHO report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 2008, nearly two-thirds of the world’s smokers live in 10 countries including Bangladesh. Tobacco use is common among men across all sectors. 60% of men […]