The World Cup brings together millions of people who sometimes have nothing in common beyond a love of football. That’s not just an opportunity to sing with strangers at the pub—it’s […]
Month: July 2014
Lavanya Malhotra: Sex education in India
The website of India’s health minister, Harsh Vardhan, currently states: “So called ‘sex education’ to be banned. Yoga to be made compulsory.” The media has not been impressed, and controversy […]
The BMJ Today: “Don’t worry. That’s perfectly normal.”
Being impersonated by Peter Cook must be an honour held by few doctors, aside perhaps from Cook’s Beyond the Fringe colleague Jonathan Miller, who trained as a neuropathologist. Similarly, having […]
Sean Roche: Resistance—what society needs to learn from the microbes
The first week in July saw extensive media coverage of the looming specter of microbial antibiotic resistance. The basic problem: Big Pharma isn’t developing new antibiotics. We look on, seemingly […]
William Cayley: Awkward is when they need us
“I just hate this sort of thing.” When I overheard that at a recent funeral, as we waited in line to greet the bereaved family, I thought to myself, “How sad […]
The BMJ Today: Alzheimer’s disease and the creation of news
Today’s UK national media are full of stories about a possible blood test that might predict progression to Alzheimer’s disease. “Blood test to give early warning of Alzheimer’s,” says the […]
Robin Kincaid: Surgical skills in Palestine—handing over the baton
In April this year, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) team travelled to East Jerusalem to oversee the teaching of the Basic Surgical Skills (BSS) course, which has been […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—7 July 2014
NEJM 3 July 2014 Vol 371 11 I don’t envy anyone with central lumbar spinal stenosis. The odds of benefit from surgery are slight. The pain can be there all […]
The BMJ Today: Choosing Wisely makes me happy
Sometimes we all need cheering up on a Monday morning, and today I couldn’t recommend more highly this parody of “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, which sings the virtues of the Choosing Wisely campaign. […]
Muir Gray: Population based and personalised care—two sides of the same coin
Health services have become archipelagos. There are great islands like primary care and secondary care, acute and community, or public health and clinical practice, and each one is surrounded by […]