NEJM 26 Jun 2014 Vol 370 2478 Cryptogenic is a good word. It’s up there with “idiopathic” and “pleiotropic” and “diathesis” for covering gross ignorance with a smattering of Greek. […]
Month: June 2014
The BMJ Today: Sugar—public enemy number one?
The crackdown on sugar continues. The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition in the UK has recommended that people reduce their daily consumption of added sugar so that it makes up […]
Desmond O’Neill: Blinded by science
The newest architectural gem in Trinity College Dublin is the award winning Long Room Hub, a slim and elegant presence inserted among classical, neoclassical, and modern buildings. Just as its […]
Alistair Wardrope: Healthcare organisations and fossil fuel divestment
Much has been said about the outcomes of the BMA’s Annual Representatives’ Meeting (ARM) this week. Of the debates held and motions passed, however, perhaps only Tim Crocker-Buqué’s tobacco motion […]
The BMJ Today: Troubling statistics—and calls for sweeping reforms
The BMJ has published some recent statistics that are more than a bit disconcerting. The first set regard corruption. Surely hard to measure, but “best estimates are that between 10% and […]
Richard Smith: The best doctors and their errors
I’m listening to Sandy Ruddles (not her real name), an ordinary general physician who does some rheumatology, present a case, and I’m feeling some regret at having given up the […]
David Wrigley: Privatisation behind an invisibility cloak
I was a guest speaker recently at a packed meeting in central Newcastle, where we discussed and debated the changes to the NHS. Everyone in the room was very concerned […]
The BMJ Today: Sugar the bogeyman and slim boy fat
I stopped adding sugar to my tea when I was a teenager. Up until then (which was sometime in the mid 1970s), I had been wont to fill the cup […]
Julian Sheather: Torture, medicine, and the need for an independent eye
In August 2012, Claudia was woken at 3:00 in the morning when soldiers burst into her home in Veracruz City, Mexico. They tied her hands and blindfolded her. They took […]
Michael Seres: A patient included conference with a difference
Often health events, conferences, and meetings say that they include patients and they do. Well, sort of. They have patients there except they are not really there. The Doctors 2.0 & […]