Hong Kongers have lived through more than their fair share of bird flu scares across the border in China over the last few years, and, of course, Sars in 2003 when 299 people in the city died of the disease. Then there was the cull of Hong Kong’s entire poultry population back in 1997. It’s not surprising, then that 7 million residents of this crowded city are a little twitchy about pandemic flu threats. more…

I’ve just attended a conference on preventing chronic disease, and something that appealed to me greatly was the idea that at all formal dinners (and my how I’ve suffered from formal dinners over the years) the main choice would be vegetarian. You’d have to request meat. The idea came from Susan Jebb, Head of Nutrition at the Medical Research Council. more…

Naomi Campbell is more often associated with toppling heels and fashion-pack tantrums than fundamental clashes in human rights, but as we all know, in our celebrity-strewn culture, fame can be a lightning rod, drawing down great matters on otherwise unremarkable souls. While there may be more moving sights than the gyrations of exposure-hungry models seeking to be rescued from the limelight they have craved, Ms Campbell’s legal spat with the UK’s Mirror Group shed light on a fascinating clash of interests, a clash of interests that permeates contemporary life: exactly where does the limit between a private life and the public interest lie? more…

This year’s Christmas BMJ generated lots of UK and international media coverage, particularly the paper that debunked seasonal myths. In Festive medical myths, Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll look at the science behind commonly believed theories and discover that many of them are in fact not true. The good news for the holidays is that sugar does not make children more hyperactive, suicide rates do not increase in the holidays, poinsettias are not toxic and eating late at night does not make you fat. Unfortunately the bad news is that wearing a hat does not decrease the amount of heat our bodies lose and there is no cure for a hangover. more…

Cracking up, to be broadcast this coming Sunday on BBC2, will be the second television programme to be broadcast in the context of the BBC’s Headroom campaign for mental health and wellbeing (bbc.co.uk/headroom). I had a preview at a screening organised by the Royal Society of Medicine. The documentary provided a moving insight into journalist and former government spin doctor Alastair Campbell’s depressive breakdown in 1986, and subsequent recovery. more…

As I write this my boss is discussing video on bmj.com with other senior colleagues, mainly to see if we should commit to providing more embedded video clips alongside news, comment, feature, and research articles. You might think this is a no-brainer. Other sites have been doing this successfully for years. And although it needn’t necessarily cost the earth, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. So I’d like your views on the three we’ve done to date. more…

Sport, medicine and royalty- what an eclectic mix, or maybe not. With some timely encouragement from HRH the Princess Royal, introducing the BMA conference Excellence in Health The Olympic ideal, mainstream medicine is starting to recognise that sport offers some very useful solutions to the growing problems of obesity and associated chronic disease. more…