I was out for dinner with a New Yorker friend of mine recently. She’s British, but she’d brought along an American friend and I happened to mention to him how much I was digging President Obama. Things deteriorated from there. “Obama is a socialist!” the heads of the rest of the table turned, as the […]
Stephen Ginn on “sexting”
There was a new moral panic last week. Teenagers are “sexting” each other and, using magic new distribution channels, sometimes these images are distributed way beyond their original recipients. There’s concern that once set free, sexts are being seen by paedophiles. As the Mirror newspaper puts it: “Sex texts sent by teens found on pervert websites.” […]
Richard Smith asks: Is it unpatriotic to criticise the NHS?
I’m worried that in the highly charged atmosphere created by the extraordinary US debate on health care my published anxieties about the NHS might brand me as unpatriotic. Perhaps Fox News or some equally evil, right wing American media outlet will track down my words in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and broadcast […]
Helen Macdonald on figures, jabs, scaling back, and sewage
The number of swine flu cases fell across the UK again, according to the weekly figures from the Health Protection Agency, although they caution their interpretation. Sir Liam Donaldson, England’s chief medical officer, announced plans to scale back the pandemic flu service now cases are falling. At the moment there are around 1600 call centres. He […]
Carl Heneghan and Matthew Thompson on Tamiflu in children: what’s all the fuss?
Carl Heneghan The last few days has been hectic since the publication of our systematic review in the BMJ on the use of antivirals in children. By now, you are probably aware of the findings given the media interest. Basically, our study raised questions about the usefulness of antiviral flu drugs in preventing and treating […]
Mark Cobain on understanding cardiovascular risk
Amidst all the debate regarding CVD risk scores, Rod Jackson’s recent editorial ‘QRISK or Framingham for predicting cardiovascular risk?’ evaluated the usefulness of two risk scores: QRISK and Framingham. It is worth recalling that it is nearly twenty years since Framingham, the UK’s most widely used risk score was developed. Is it time we reassess […]
Time to ignore all surveys, says Richard Smith
Recently in Bangladesh I had breakfast with a Harvard professor of economics who told me: “Economists pay no attention to what people say, only to what they do.” Now I know, as we all do, that there is a big gap between what people say and what they do, and consequently I’ve always been wary […]
Tom Nolan: Is Tamiflu useful in children or not?
Why did the operator at the National Pandemic Flu Service give the child Tamiflu? The cynics will say because the algorithm told him to, but the real answer, according to the UK government, is that it’s the safest thing to do to prevent severe infections. New research in the BMJ questions that policy and looks […]
Richard Smith asks “Am I going to hell?”
The other night, as is my wont, I imagined myself dying, and I wondered as I came near the end whether I would suddenly fear that I might be going to hell. Even if it doesn’t happen to me, there must be huge numbers of people in the world facing that prospect as they die. […]
Joe Collier on tackling breaches in the personal professional divide
How best to set the ways we communicate with each other, and so to establish our “rules of engagement”, can be difficult’. Moreover, any “rules” we establish may vary over time, either in the long term (plenty of doctors who meet in the work place later marry), or more acutely if circumstances change (one moment […]