US healthcare costs are unsustainable and a large amount of money is being wasted on unnecessary treatment.  There was general agreement about these statements among the audience, speakers and panelists at the recent Avoiding Avoidable Care conference, held in Boston. The summit was organized by the Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation, the New America Foundation, and co-hosted by the Institute of Medicine. more…

A Department of Health review into the Poly Implant Prothèse (PiP) breast implant scandal has found that although the UK regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), acted appropriately and followed scientific and clinical advice, there are “areas where improvement can and should be made for the future.”

Back in March 2010 the French regulator found that the manufacturer of the PIP silicone breast implants had been using a grade of silicone filler that was not of the standard previously approved for implant use. more…

On Friday 4 May 2012 “Strengthening the Global R&D System: Innovation for Health Needs in Developing Countries” took place in Geneva.

The keynote address, ”Investing in Global Public Goods” was given by Joseph E Stiglitz, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and professor at Columbia University. more…

There were no dissenters from the view at last week’s Cambridge Health Network meeting that London has chronic overcapacity in its acute hospitals. It’s been the case for decades. One reason for the continuing failure to reform lies in the story of one woman that all three local candidates in her constituency in the last election had campaigned for the reopening of a local district general hospital. But it now looks as if economic problems may “solve” what policy makers have failed to achieve: more money can allow muddling on in the same old way, but less money forces change.

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Nestlé has just announced a three year partnership with the International Diabetes Federation (IDF)—an umbrella organisation representing national diabetes societies from around the world— as part of its contribution to the fight against non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Such diseases include cardiovascular disease, cancer respiratory illness and diabetes.  more…

JAMA  9 May 2012  Vol 307
1925    In a wonderful letter to Humphry Davy in 1800, Coleridge declared that science, as a human activity, “being necessarily performed with the Passion of hope, is poetical.”

All good science is inspired with the poetry of hope; but, alas, so also is a lot of bad science. If results are negative, then it is a lot easier to hope vainly that they contain hints of great things to come than to admit that years of effort have simply proved nullity. more…

Enforcing the law on drug driving has not been a problem historically of either political will, or policing priorities. The main issue has always been applying the science and technology to make the law work.
 
This week’s announcement of a “crackdown” on the “blight” of drug driving has all the hallmarks of a New Labour announcement: a story spun over a whole weekend presenting both the UK government’s tough and humane sides. Road safety minister Mike Penning, from the comfort of the breakfast TV sofa, said soon there would be drug limits like there are with alcohol. He even offered the idle threat: “If you drive while under the influence of drugs, you will not get away with it.” more…

In 1512, Leonardo da Vinci set out to clarify the function of a specific, bulbous part of the heart. He injected molten wax into an ox heart to make a cast.

This was the second time in medical history that wax casting had been used: the first time was between 1504-1507, when Leonardo came up with the idea to inject the ventricles of the brain, a fragile organ which was easily damaged in dissection.

From the waxwork heart, Leonardo made a gypsum mould. Then he blew glass into the mould to make a transparent model of the heart. Through this, he pumped water with a suspension of grass seed. It showed vortices that led Leonardo to posit a function for this part of the heart – the aortic valve – not mentioned again until 1912. However, the function of the aortic valve – “that these eddies were vital in closing the valve when blood flow ceased after each beat of the heart” – was not confirmed until MRI scans in the 1980s. This was Leonardo’s “last and greatest anatomical campaign.” more…

Dear consultant colleague,

The standard of consultant letters is very variable so we have decided to introduce a new proforma for consultant letters to GPs.

Patients attend many different outpatient departments and we intend to introduce a different proforma for every department in each of the hospitals to whom we refer. more…

Into the Kuchlak nutrition clinic shuffles a pale blue burqa. From within the sky-coloured folds of fabric, the Pashtu woman pulls a tightly swaddled infant. Her son is eleven months old. Unwrapped, the boy’s ribs stick out, the skin hangs loosely from his limbs and his head seems too big for his body. He weighs 4kg. That’s 100g more than last week, but still some way off his height-based target weight of 5.3kg, and less than half the average weight of a child his age in the UK. more…