Journals historically started as print publications and, after reaching the library, were catalogued and arranged systematically for readers to find articles easily. Sometimes academics were confused and so would ask library staff to find the journal or articles in it. […]
Richard Smith asks: Is medicine as excessive as the banks?
Is medicine, like the banks, falling into excess? I asked myself this question at the end of last year as I read about the death of Faith Williams, the conjoint twin who died 23 days after the operation to divide her from her sister, Hope, who died during the operation. Does it really make sense […]
Joe Collier on being an atheist
My belief that a supernatural power such as a god does not exist (ie, my being an atheist), is central to the way I think and act, and also determines how I see and relate to others both as individuals and when they function as groups (as in organised religion). But this is no recent […]
I see, I understand, I care, I act – thanks goodness for doctors…
I once heard of an experiment where a subject was placed in a room – and when smoke appeared under the door, she rightly raised the alarm immediately. However, when the experiment was repeated with another subject, but this time with a handful of actors in the room who deliberately did nothing when the smoke […]
Juliet Walker: BMJ in the news
There is some good news this week for men in their fifties who have not exercised much in the past. A BMJ study published last week shows that taking up exercise between 50 to 60 years old is just as effective as exercising frequently by middle age. This means that it is never to late […]
Eva Brencicova on Red Nose Day
If you had asked me last week what I associated with a red nose, I would have replied (slightly puzzled about the question) “common cold” or possibly Rudolph, the celebrated reindeer to whom we owe the accurate delivery of our Christmas presents even on the foggiest Christmas Eves. Only very recently have I discovered that […]
James Raftery on NICE’s cost per QALY threshold: does the public have a view?
One approach to setting NICE’s cost per QALY threshold might be to survey the public. In 2003 NICE and the Department of Health did just that, with a study “assessing the feasibility of estimating the value that the UK population might attach to a QALY.” […]
Richard Smith on learning from health systems in Asia
It depresses me that despite the spread of the internet we are still most of us stuck in our intellectual and geographical silos. Why, I wondered at a conference in California last month, do we hear in Britain so little about Asian systems when they have so much to teach us? […]
Richard Smith asks who is the E O Wilson of medicine?
A friend has written to me asking whom I think might be the “E O Wilson of Medicine,” and I’m stumped. Perhaps some readers of the BMJ have never heard of E O Wilson. For those that haven’t he is a Harvard biologist who has twice won the Pullitzer Prize and who invented “consilience,” the […]
Support small charities, says Peter Lapsley
It is very good to see Changing Faces nominated as the BMA charity of the year, both because it is an outstanding organisation and because the nomination recognises a reality of which too many people are unaware. I know Changing Faces well. Run by its founder, the indefatigable James Partridge, it supports and represents people […]