The H1N1 vaccination programme is underway in the UK and many other countries across the globe. In Sweden a million people have already been vaccinated. One swine flu vaccine manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, expects to produce 440 million doses over the next few months. With newspapers, television and the internet raising doubts about the safety of the […]
David Payne: Open access and the editor’s choice
A management consultant friend confessed last week that despite advising many media company clients about their digital strategy, he had little interest in Web 2:0 and social networking, shunned the TV when he got home, and ate dinner with his wife while BBC Radio 3 played in the background. […]
Siddhartha Yadav: My first conference as a speaker
The adrenaline rush was unbearable. I could feel my palms sweating. When I tried to clip the microphone on to my coat, my hands were trembling. Eager looking eyes of the audience were pinned on me. I took a deep breath and with my heart still pounding, I said, “Hello everyone!” […]
Richard Smith: We don’t know what to eat
WHO is currently setting priorities for research in chronic or non-communicable disease, and generally the first research question is “Will what has worked in rich countries work in low and middle income countries?” We know, for example, what to do to reduce deaths from heart disease and how to reduce tobacco consumption. But interestingly when […]
Harvey Marcovitch: a flea-market hunter-gatherer
BMJ bloggers are in the habit of going to exotic places to listen to exciting lectures. In my time I’ve done my share of all that but a few weeks ago my medical education leapt ahead in an unlikely place – the Malvern Giant Flea Market. In a subsidiary role as my antique dealer wife’s […]
John Coggon: Can a conscience dictate?
If I asked a physiologist to show me where her conscience is, I’m fairly sure she’d not be able to. Yet, it seems, a great many doctors appeal directly to their consciences, or at least wish to be free to do so. This is a little strange. If a patient says “God makes me do […]
Julian Sheather on Mandelson’s distemper
Reader I am sick, sick if not quite unto death then very nearly unto despair. There is a gnawing within that will not let me rest. I have searched in vain for what to call my malediction. I have been sacking my shelves, rifling my dictionaries and encyclopedias, consulting with the most eminent physicians, but […]
Domhnall MacAuley attends a BMJ Masterclass
That articulated lorry hurtling towards you may be driven by one of your fat beer drinking patients- who just has fallen asleep at the wheel. Sleep apnoea used to be a rather esoteric research field in the backroads of respiratory medicine but is now mainstream or, more alarmingly, main road. Respiratory physicians may joke that […]
Liz Wager: Are men more dishonest than women?
Frank Wells, who is probably the UK’s first professional fraud buster, says he has “yet to meet a female research fraudster.” All the 26 cases of proven villainy he has dealt with have been men. That’s interesting, but not quite enough to fill a blog and perhaps says more about the sex ratio of senior […]
Tom Nolan on the swine flu vaccine
The swine flu vaccine is officially here. The UK government announced on Friday that over 400,000 doses of the swine flu vaccine will be delivered to hospitals this week. The first to get the jab (from Wednesday) will be hospital inpatients belonging to at-risk groups and hospital staff. Next week GPs are due to start vaccinating […]