We are reluctant to remove rapid responses from bmj.com because they are part of the BMJ’s record—and hence science’s record. We believe that there are few good grounds for tampering […]
Month: January 2013
Richard Smith: A jolly afternoon with Dying Matters
Dying Matters is an organisation that aims to raise awareness of dying, death, and bereavement, and this is Dying Awareness Week. The organisation exists because of the mass denial of […]
Sophie Petit-Zeman on UK DUETs: uncertainties as opportunities
“Our failure to confront uncertainty about the effects of treatment has resulted in the suffering and death of patients, sometimes on a massive scale.” This chilling statement comes from Iain […]
Domhnall MacAuley: The silent cost of caring
As he hung up his coat at the end of the morning, he stunned his nursing and junior colleagues: “I will be glad when I don’t have to do that […]
Richard Smith: Buggered about by the NHS Sustainable Development Unit: a story with a moral
I’m an enthusiastic follower of the NHS Sustainable Development Unit, its director, David Pencheon, and its important mission of reducing NHS carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, but like all […]
Krishna Chinthapalli: The danger of sugar
Millions of years ago, plants were making fruits to disperse seeds. Once the seeds were ready to travel in animal stomachs, fruits concentrated more sugar and ripened. They became an […]
Jonny Martell: What they don’t teach at medical school
Tomorrow I’ll go to work and among other things, prescribe drugs. I’ve been told that they work and that they’re mostly safe. There’s plenty to encourage me in believing this: […]
Rej Bhumbra: Global surgery—global wellness
The Chinese phrase, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,” is widely used, […]
Julian Sheather: On death, dying, and “Departures”
Dead bodies do not seem to have a place in the modern world. Death, dying, the dead—if they can be so unceremoniously bundled together—lie in our culture somewhere between the […]
Vijaya Nath: Revalidation: opportunity or challenge?
On 3 December 2012, the UK was the first nation, and the General Medical Council (GMC) the first regulatory body, to implement large scale changes to the regulation of its […]