The high prices charged by companies for cancer drugs has led to lots of speculation, but very little explanation. The most interesting attempt to explain these high prices has been made by a US oncologist Scott Ramsey. As the article is paywalled, I summarise it below (with thanks to the author for a copy). His […]
Tag: Cancer
The BMJ Today: Cancer, climate, and dementia
• Cancer diagnosis The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has released new guidelines to try to speed up the diagnosis of cancer. They recommend that all GPs should have direct access (without referral) to magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography, upper gastrointestinal endoscopy, colonoscopy, and occult blood screening. At present, only some […]
Richard Smith: Communicating with patients about ductal carcinoma in situ
Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a condition we don’t understand. We don’t know its significance, how to describe it, and how to treat it. Worse, we may have created it. Its incidence in the US in 1975 was 1.87 per 100 000; now it’s 32.5. During that time there has been no drop in […]
Research highlights – 2 September 2011
“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. […]
Domhnall MacAuley: From the American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting (Denver)
The next big thing in physical activity research: sitting doing nothing. Steve Blair (University of South Carolina), a major player in the physical activity research world, suggests that the pattern of inactivity is important. Sedentary behaviour, irrespective of the overall level of activity is itself a risk factor- sitting doing nothing may be harmful, even […]
Cheryl Rofer: Increased cancer risks from radiation for workers and children in Japan
I’ve finally gotten to where I’ve wanted to be in working through Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation (BEIR) VII: capable of evaluating radiation doses at Fukushima in terms of health risk. I would have liked to have been able to evaluate the radiation readings at various places around Japan in terms of health risk, but […]
Cheryl Rofer on the BEIR VII report
I’ve been looking for numbers. What is the probability of a radiation dose of x millisieverts producing a cancer? I should have found the BEIR VII report, BEIR standing for Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, some time ago. It’s been almost 20 years since BEIR V was a constant background presence at my job, the […]
Mervyn Dean reflects on culture specific medicine
In the past 10 days or so I’ve settled into some sort of routine at KCMC, seeing patients on the wards in the morning, and in the afternoons either following up on administrative matters or trying to arrange teaching sessions, the latter with some small degree of success. […]
Georg Röggla at the 45th meeting of the EASD
The 45th annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) took place in Vienna, Austria, from September 30th to October 2nd The town centre and all places of interest were flooded with the bright red congress-rucksacks. […]
Domhnall MacAuley on a dead certainty
So, who gets cancer? Have you a mental image? With heart disease, our classic picture is of an overweight hypertensive smoker, living between the pub and the chip shop. But, you rarely hear that someone “looks a likely candidate for cancer”. […]