What to do when you are a sexagenarian physician who has retired from hospital practice with 40 years in the NHS under your belt and golf/Sudoku not really appealing? Well, […]
Year: 2009
Matiram Pun backs web-only publication
Journals historically started as print publications and, after reaching the library, were catalogued and arranged systematically for readers to find articles easily. Sometimes academics were confused and so would ask […]
Richard Smith asks: Is medicine as excessive as the banks?
Is medicine, like the banks, falling into excess? I asked myself this question at the end of last year as I read about the death of Faith Williams, the conjoint […]
Joe Collier on being an atheist
My belief that a supernatural power such as a god does not exist (ie, my being an atheist), is central to the way I think and act, and also determines […]
I see, I understand, I care, I act – thanks goodness for doctors…
I once heard of an experiment where a subject was placed in a room – and when smoke appeared under the door, she rightly raised the alarm immediately. However, when […]
Juliet Walker: BMJ in the news
There is some good news this week for men in their fifties who have not exercised much in the past. A BMJ study published last week shows that taking up […]
Eva Brencicova on Red Nose Day
If you had asked me last week what I associated with a red nose, I would have replied (slightly puzzled about the question) “common cold” or possibly Rudolph, the celebrated […]
James Raftery on NICE’s cost per QALY threshold: does the public have a view?
One approach to setting NICE’s cost per QALY threshold might be to survey the public. In 2003 NICE and the Department of Health did just that, with a study “assessing […]
Richard Smith on learning from health systems in Asia
It depresses me that despite the spread of the internet we are still most of us stuck in our intellectual and geographical silos. Why, I wondered at a conference in […]
Richard Smith asks who is the E O Wilson of medicine?
A friend has written to me asking whom I think might be the “E O Wilson of Medicine,” and I’m stumped. Perhaps some readers of the BMJ have never heard […]