Gosh, the BMJ is suddenly full of interesting articles. I must skim past them all or I shall start sounding like a creep. I shall confine myself, by long tradition, to curmudgeonly remarks on the boring bits (the clinical papers). more…

An upbeat “natural history modelling study

87 The story of HIV infection over the last 25 years has shed light on every aspect of medicine and its political context in our time. For most Africans and Indians it is still a death sentence: for Danes aged 25 and without hepatitis C virus, it reduces life expectancy (statistically) from 51 years to 39 years. more…

A fragment ?from Sippar, c 1700 BCE

Tablet iii
The alewife spoke to him, to Gilgamesh,
“Gilgamesh, where do you roam? more…

This is a species of grass found around the Northern hemisphere, known in Ireland as “holy grass

Clopidogrel is a mongrelly sort of name, with some speakers emphasising the dog and others the clopido. It is of course very widely used by cardiologists, especially to prevent occlusion after coronary stenting. more…

One respondent to my “Nightmare in NEJM Street

This issue of the new-style BMJ is full of well-presented interesting material, but as I’ve already said, none of it is original clinical research. more…

Your biological age is written in your telomeres, which shorten every time your cells divide. Frequently dividing cells like leucocytes lose about 50 binary pairs of DNA nucleotides per year, and when they get down to a certain length, more…

A systematic review attempts to look at all studies which compare generalist with specialist care. This is doomed for various reasons discussed in the accompanying editorial, not least because most of the studies are observational, very few are randomised, it is generally impossible to adjust for case-mix, and it is very difficult to assess publication bias. more…