Sir William Osler advocated the concept of a “quinquennial brain dusting“: which was my justification for taking a week out to visit some integrated care organisations on the West Coast […]
Month: November 2011
Aser Garcia Rada: Co-payments and privatisation in Spain
Some time ago I wrote a letter to the Spanish daily El Mundo, saying that co-payments –an extra charge for accessing medical services in the public healthcare system, should be […]
Stephen Ginn: Occupy London
Established on 15 October outside St Paul’s and watched over by a statue of Queen Victoria, the Occupy London Stock Exchange (LSX) camp continues its controversial settlement in central London. […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 21 November 2011
JAMA 16 Nov 2011 Vol 306 2099 Steve Nissen became something of a hero of mine when he showed how bad data from pharma-funded studies had been used to mask […]
David Payne: More feedback about the bmj.com redesign
Our new site is now ten days old and we’re continuing to get feedback from readers. My first blog listed some of the comments we’d had to date, and our […]
Neil French: A new source of hope for children in Malawi – the introduction of pneumococcal vaccines
Pneumococcal disease causes probably at least half of the pneumonia cases in Malawi. It also causes meningitis, blood poisoning, and otitis, which if it doesn’t kill can leave a child […]
Norman Lufesi: Malawi’s aggressive response to childhood pneumonia
World pneumonia day this year was occasion for a huge celebration in Malawi, as we had chosen the day to introduce pneumococcal vaccines, which will protect our children from the […]
Tom Yates: Lies, damn lies, and epidemiology
“Dear sir, I have completely failed to understand a simple criticism of our work, please tell everyone, yours, BBCnews“ Tweet by @bengoldacre, 4 November 2011 The misuse of epidemiology is […]
Melanie Calvert: CONSORT quality of life extension under development
In the past decade, recommendations and user’s guides for evaluating, reporting, and interpreting health related quality of life (HRQL) outcomes from randomised controlled trials have been published, but disappointingly few […]
Research highlights – 18 November 2011
“Research highlights” is a weekly round-up of research papers appearing in the print BMJ. We start off with this week’s research questions, before providing more detail on some individual research […]