Today I feel deeply the shame of a monoglot. I’m at a meeting in Guatemala, and the organisers of a meeting of perhaps 200 people have had to hire two translators—for the benefit of me and one American. And tomorrow he departs, meaning that the two translators will be working just for me. How pathetic. more…

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 them. I will be obliged to go onto television in Britain and tearfully recant, rather like a hostage asking for release, saying that I’ve always adored the NHS and have no doubts that it is the best health care system in the world. more…

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 of surveys; but we did publish them in the BMJ when I was the editor. The more I think about it, however, the more I think that we should ignore all surveys. Life is too short. more…

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.

Almost two in three Americans believe in hell, accord to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Amusingly to me, three quarters believe in heaven. Believing in heaven but not hell seems like a great option. We could probably found a whole religion around that. more…

As we begin to assimilate the reality of assisted suicide we should also take the next step to living funerals. I’ve never been to one, but a living funeral is exactly as the name implies: the “funeral” is held while the star turn is still alive - but close to death. If the person is still far from death (although all of us all of the time are only a moment away) then it’s a party. more…

How international do we want to be? Many organisations find themselves discussing that question in a globalising world—and most don’t find it easy to answer. Britain itself can’t answer the question, flirting with the US and remaining semi-detached in Europe. I’ve spent the day trying to answer the question with an organisation—let’s call it the British Association of Ducks (BAD). more…

I’m fed up of being told not to panic over swine flu. If I want to panic then I’ll panic. I’ll run naked and screaming down the street imploring my neighbours to do the same.

But then I realise that I don’t know what exactly you do when you panic. Do you turn to jelly, burst into tears, take to your bed, shoot yourself? I’d better look in the dictionary, especially as there presumably won’t be time for that when I do decide to panic. more…

One of the things about being an “old guy” is that you realise how extraordinarily slow we are at doing the right thing. You also see wheels being constantly reinvented.

This morning, for example, I heard on the radio how the Health Select Committee had “discovered” that 10% of people suffer harm on being admitted to hospital. The chairman of the committee was shocked and thought that the NHS wasn’t doing enough. more…

I have just come back from a gathering of the “big dogs of British medicine” at Highclere Castle, home of Lord Carnarvon, who participated in the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. The point of the meeting was to provide the Royal College of Physicians working party on future doctors with material for their deliberations.

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I associate camps with wood smoke, burnt sausages, and filled latrines marked with crosses, but HealthCamp is different. It’s about innovation, and I attended my first one last week—at the soulless Excel Centre in Docklands, LondonHeathCamp begins with lightning talks. In under two minutes participants must pose one problem they’d like to discuss. We had 21 people—many of them doctors, most of them young, and all of them entrepreneurs—pose problems. more…