To all the newly qualified doctors about to inaugurate their careers in junior house officer posts across the UK next week, I bestow upon you the secrets to a happy […]
Year: 2014
Dinesh C Sharma: India’s heart disease problem—connecting the dots
As a science and health journalist, I have written a number of stories highlighting how lifestyle ailments, like diabetes and heart disease, have emerged as major health issue in India—including […]
The BMJ Today: Essential medicines, evidence, and influence
Today an Analysis article questions the quality of applications to the World Health Organization’s essential medicines list. The WHO essential medicines list is a skeletal formulary of medicines that all […]
Jane Feinmann: A way forward for quality peer review
Blind faith that the publication of medical research in peer reviewed journals elevates a study to the status of “the evidence,” and therefore “the truth,” may be on the wane […]
Richard Smith: “All problems are ultimately linguistic problems”
“All problems are ultimately linguistic problems,” says Muir Gray, once NHS chief knowledge officer, misquoting the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. But I don’t think that he misquoted him badly, and that […]
The BMJ Today: Dabigatran and other new oral anticoagulants—demand the data
Last week, The BMJ published a series of articles that investigated how the safety and effectiveness of the new oral anticoagulant, dabigatran, had been studied, licensed, and subsequently marketed. An […]
Saurabh Jha: How a fine-tooth comb is entangling Obamacare
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), which recently survived a major scare in the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the individual mandate, has just met another potential nemesis. Halbig vs. Burwell […]
Mary Rance: Loneliness—it’s time to stop talking and start doing
Extreme loneliness in older people in the UK is a topic that always ignites debate. Partly because the problem is only getting worse as the population ages and, I suspect, […]
The BMJ Today: Improving vaccination rates
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held a press conference to discuss a recent survey, which found that rates of HPV vaccine coverage did […]
David Zigmond: Depression needs more than formulaic treatment
An eminent academic psychologist, Professor David Clark, recently broadcast on the BBC’s Today programme (1 July) authoritative hope to the many sufferers of depression. He informed us how current scientifically formulated, […]