My doctor father used to regularly set his trousers on fire. Born in 1924, he started smoking cigarettes as a teenager. He died of a smoking related cancer in 2003. […]
Month: December 2016
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Powers of ten
It’s appropriate that this blog, my hundredth under the “When I Use a Word” heading, a hundred being ten times ten, should appear in December, which, until the addition of […]
Daniel Sokol: The ethics of the on-call rota
A colleague is sick. Someone is needed to cover him tomorrow. There are no locums and no volunteers. Who should be selected? Few issues generate more passion and cause more […]
William Cayley: Measurement or action?
As our measurements and metrics in medicine proliferate and multiply, it is exceedingly tempting to think that our increased ability to measure correlates directly with an increased ability to care […]
Richard Smith: What if all the works of Democritus had survived and those of Aristotle been lost
Richard Feynman, the great physicist, conducted a thought experiment in which he asked what one statement would he save if all of scientific knowledge was lost. His answer: “All things […]
Tom Jefferson: Adapting pharmaceutical regulation to more transparency
On the 8 December the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the EU Commission hosted a workshop to discuss Adaptive Pathways, formerly known as Adaptive Licensing. The 180 physical and 155 […]
Sophie Yelland: In praise of primary care physicians
If someone told you the world was ending and gave you ten minutes to fix it, you’d probably express some mild expletives. This is a complete exaggeration to vent my […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Ḥanukkah at Christmas
This year the first day of the Jewish festival Ḥanukkah falls on the first day of Christmas. Call it “Chrismukkah”, if you like. [The letter Ḥ is pronounced like the […]
News review 2016: Corruption, Polish trainees, Zika, and dementia top the news hit parade in 2016
News items about fraud and corruption in healthcare always attract a lot of attention, and 2016 was no exception. The most popular story on bmj.com this year concerned scientists at […]
Sally Browning: Acts of kindness
Five days after starting chemotherapy for lymphoma, I knew, in the night, that I had an acute abdomen and needed to go to hospital. The two paramedics who arrived were […]