Despite all the hand wringing and arguments over single payer healthcare in American social debates past and present, what most observers seem to miss (but patients and doctors know very well) […]
Month: February 2016
Jane Wells: Meningitis B vaccine—still learning to deal with uncertainty
Another vaccine controversy rears its head, this time meningitis B. The parents of a two year old who died of the disease posted pictures of their desperately ill child online, […]
Jennifer Rohn: Should the meningitis B vaccine be offered to children older than 1 year old?
The advent of quantitative approaches to understanding the patterns of disease ushered in a golden era for public health. From the link between smoking and lung cancer to HIV and […]
BMJ Open: Five years old and growing
Five years ago today, BMJ Open appeared on the scene. Conceived as a general medical journal to provide authors a fast, transparent route to publication, BMJ Open could have developed […]
Richard Smith: Qualitative research and The BMJ—hidden motives
I’m much amused by the pious positions taken by researchers and BMJ editors in the spirited dispute over qualitative research. The researchers are upset that The BMJ largely excludes qualitative […]
Cordelia Galgut: Why are the long term effects of cancer so rarely talked about?
Since being diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer 12 years ago, I have been told countless times that I am lucky to have survived. I hear this pronouncement with equal regularity […]
Beryl De Souza: Spirituality and compassion in medicine
Spirituality can be defined as “the aspect of humanity that refers to the way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose, and the way they experience their connectedness to the […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—22 February 2016
NEJM 18 Feb 2016 Vol 374 Testosterone, lust and rage 611 When the great poet WB Yeats reached the age of 67, he noticed a certain waning of his powers […]
Tony Delamothe: Dreaming at TED
Each year’s TED conference has a theme, and this year’s, in Vancouver, was Dream. The acronym TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, but the annual program of talks long […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Pro patria mori
Exactly a hundred years ago, on 19 February 1916, a British soldier, Captain Robert French, died in London after injuries sustained in battle. The following account is taken from his […]