The common pejorative names for peddlers of ineffective medicines relate to advertising. A quack, wrote Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary, is “a murderer without a license”. The origin of […]
Month: January 2016
Richard Smith: Learning from ruins
Whenever I wander through ruins I imagine people centuries hence picking through the ruins of my world and wondering about the people who lived there. We can learn from ruins, […]
Sally Marlow and Sadie Boniface: From “plucked out of the air” to grounded in evidence—UK drinking guidelines reviewed
This week the Chief Medical Officer has published new guidelines on drinking alcohol. Was a revision necessary, and if so why? The old guidelines were two decades old, and we […]
Graham Prestwich and Roland Valori: Management opportunity—Job title: Patient
We are seeking motivated and determined project managers with a keen interest in healthcare to join our team of health professionals to improve the health and wellbeing of our population. […]
BMJ in the news: round-up of 2015
From the Ebola crisis to the weekend effect on hospital death rates, The BMJ publishes articles that receive extensive media coverage from top global news outlets. Here we present some […]
George Gillett: Medical schools should teach students to combat disease, not terrorism
The winter holiday is a busy time for medical students. In anticipation of another year of clinical rotations, we’re faced with the annual onslaught of online training activities to prepare for […]
Jørn Olsen et al: The future of birth cohorts
The origins of some common chronic diseases lie early in life, often before birth. This observation, championed by David Barker, has spurred several countries to start national pregnancy or birth cohorts in […]
Ian Forgacs: Will senior doctors and the public support junior doctor’s strike action?
Support for their junior colleagues from senior doctors has thus far been strong. What surely must have been almost the entire consultant body at the Royal Free Hospital (505 of […]
Jessamy Bagenal: Junior doctors strike action—frustration and mistrust
Junior doctors received a text on Monday 4 January informing them that the negotiations over the junior doctor’s contract had ended. Industrial action in England is going to proceed. It […]
Zahra Al-Asaadi: Medical volunteering in the refugee crisis
The current refugee crisis and mass migration into Europe is the biggest since World War Two and is probably the greatest humanitarian challenge of the century. The United Nations High […]